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Diseases if Women 



AND 



Easy Childbirth 



BY 



J. H. TILDEN, M. D. 




AUTHOR OF 

"Criticisms of the Practice of Medicine;" Monographs on "Typhoid 

Fever," "Cholera Infantum," "Appendicitis;" "Gonorrhea 

and Syphilis;" "What Shall I Eat When 

Traveling," etc. 



ALSO EDITOR AND PUBLISHER OF 

A STUFFED CLUB 

DENVER, COLO. 



^ 



*\# 



Copyright 1912 by J. H. Tilden. 



THE SMITH-BROOKS PRESS. DENVER 



©CI.A328522 



DEDICATED 

TO THOSE WOMEN WHO ARE KEEPING PACE WITH 
PROGRESS. 



A germ either is toxic or it is not, and the fact that the supposed most 
malignant germs are found devoid of toxicity should compel every thinking 
mind to believe that their toxicity is accidental, and that the cause must be 
looked for outside of themselves. 



When oxygen is cut off from a part, decomposition takes place, and then 
the germs that were present all the time take on toxicity. Why did they not take 
on this state before decomposition? If they were toxic, why was it that they 
had no such influence until decomposition from some other cause started up? 
If gonococci remain dormant in the tissues, which is declared on medical 
authority to be true, what causes them to take on renewed activity? Decom- 
position, which the}) had no part in developing. (See my work on "Venereal 
Diseases.") 

It may be asked: To what is toxicity due? When life is extinct, decay 
takes place, the tissues melt down and generate a cadaveric poison — an alkaloid 
which is toxic; and everything becomes toxic that is saturated with this alkaloid 
of decomposition. It is the antithesis of the leufyomaine alkaloid: one is de- 
structive, the other conservative; one causes death, the other conserves life; and 
it is the alkaloid of decomposition that imparts toxicity to everything it saturates. 
When this poison is overcome — when it ceases to be generated in a disease 
process — the process soon becomes aseptic. 

The first cause of toxicity is the generation of this alkaloid of decompo- 
sition. When the discharges from a wound, from the bowels, from the urethra, 
from the bronchial tubes, from a syphilitic ulcer, from an ulcerating cancer, are 
charged with this poison, they are infectious, and are capable of imparting 
infection to whatever living tissue happens to give them hostage. 

The poison generated in all disease processes is the same; when the 
symptoms of its poisonous influence varies, it is due to the tissues involved, the 
amount of poison absorbed, and the bodily resistance. 

In such diseases as cancer and syphilis, nature has time to prepare her 
defenses. These diseases are walled off by organized infiltrations or exudates. 
This fortification is to prevent absorption of the decomposition. It is not en- 
tirely successful, but the poison gains entrance very slowly; and that is why 
these diseases run a chronic course. In wounds where discharges are pent up, 
absorption takes place rapidly, and death comes soon; but the character of the 
poison must be the same. 

So long as the theory of multiple, specific causation is adhered to, there 
cannot be anything but chaos reigning in the realm of cure. 



Diseases of Women 



CHAPTER I. 



Introduction. 




HERE are specialists for the eye, ear, nose, 
throat, lungs, stomach, and, in fact, for every 
part of the body. The gynecologist looks after 
the diseases peculiar to women, and as a rule he 
is a very arrogant sort of fellow. He is quite 
sure that a physician who does not confine him- 
self to treating women, and women only, is a mountebank if he 
assumes to know anything about the great specialty known as 
gynecology. The bigotry and intolerance of specialists check timid 
doctors and cause them to send all important cases to them, and 
they, from lack of criticism or any other restraining influence, fall 
into the habit of forgetting that the organs they specialize on are 
a part of the body — that every organ or community of organs 
must be correlated with all the other organs to make up a body. 
The gynecologist and other specialists make of the parts of 
the body they treat independent isonomies; they act on the theory 
that an organ can be removed without any special injury to the 
body or other organs. The readiness with which they consent to 
sacrifice a part or all of an organ proves that they have a very 
loose idea of the community value of the various organs. 



6 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

It should be known that local diseases come to a sudden end 
when not encouraged ; when not forced to thrive by a constitutional 
derangement. And there is another large truth which is not gener- 
ally known, that should go with that truth, namely : local treatment 
of any part of the body must fail unless accompanied with a treat- 
ment that will correct the general health. Hence the most impor- 
tant treatment for acute or chronic diseases is to correct the consti- 
tution — correct nutrition — by appropriate diet, exercise and a cor- 
rect care of the skin in bathing and clothing it. Of course, there 
must be mental poise. If all this treatment is necessary to recover 
health, can an intelligent mind believe that the best and most appro- 
priate local treatment can cure without the general treatment? 

No one knows the direct, indirect and reflex influences of 
the various organs of the body on the general health, or commu- 
nity health, so well as the experienced general practitioner. The 
physician who is wide-awake on this matter is loath to specialize, 
if in doing so he must give up keeping in touch with diseases of 
other parts of the body. 

SPECIALISM ONE-SIDED. 

The lopsidedness of specialism has drawn many smiles, and 
frequently called forth much contempt, from those whose opinions 
are worth anything. 

The reckless disregard of the consequences of mutilating 
women has been criminally great. There have been thousands of 
women unsexed in the name of modern medical science, when there 
was no excuse for the vandalism except that surgical zeal had run 
away with medical judgment. 

The two men who stand out as having been the most pro- 
nounced agitators and inciters of the medical and surgical reign 



MUTILATION OF WOMEN. 7 

of terror that began the latter part of the last century, and which 
has caused the mutilation and massacre of tens of thousands of 
women in the past three decades, are Drs. Battey and Tait. The 
former was an American surgeon who began his career in Rome, 
Georgia, and who achieved the reputation of being the father of 
ovariotomy. He legitimatized the removal of the ovaries for their 
supposed detrimental influence, reflexly, on other organs of the 
body. For instance: If a woman suffered from headaches that 
could not be cured by giving drugs, the gynecologist felt justified, 
according to Battey's interpretation of modern medical science, in 
removing the ovaries and rendering the woman barren; and this 
vandalistic mutilation was resorted to all over the country, with 
no more excuse than a guess based on a prevailing surgical fad. 
When normal ovariotomy fell into disfavor, appendicitis and opera- 
tions for pelvic disorders jumped into popular favor; and this 
hobby has been and now is ridden with as great fury as its 
predecessor. 

To cure all sorts of symptoms of indigestion, hysteria, and 
nervousness, the doctors of twenty years ago were justified in re- 
moving the ovaries. No one would dare criticise an operator; 
for was he not a member of a learned profession? A professional 
man able to interpret the cause of an obscure pain and locate its 
cause in the ovaries was a man to be looked up to. 

DR. BATTEY AND OVARIOTOMY. 

When it was fashionable to boast of the number of ovario- 
tomies performed by the leaders, some of the reckless boosters for 
Dr. Battey declared that he had removed a carload. 

During this reign of terror, women learned that there was 
not much danger in having their ovaries removed, and in having 



8 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

the operation performed they were relieved of all responsibilities in 
the line of reproduction. That there were such women may not 
be believed by some quite intelligent readers; nevertheless, there 
are women to be found who are willing to be unsexed rather than 
take responsibility in a reproductive way, and the ovariotomy fad 
was the cause of the "race-suicide" fad that accompanied it. Add 
to those who are willing to be unsexed those who are condemned 
to the operation by science-deluded, fee-splitting and fee-grabbing 
doctors, and the number runs into the thousands who have been 
unsexed every year for nearly a quarter of a century or more. In- 
deed, there were so many put out of the reproductive class in the 
few years preceding the election of Mr. Roosevelt as president 
that he felt called upon to protest at what he called race-suicide. 
Little did he know that the cause of the falling-off in births in 
this country was due to a surgical fad that received the hearty 
approval of modern medical science — a fad he would have 
stamped with his approval if he had been in a position to do so, 
the same as he is now approving of the more recent modern medical 
discoveries, which will also pass away in the course of time and 
bear as honorable post-mortem mention as the Battey fad. 

We hear much these days about thousands dying annually 
who could be saved if the government helped the profession to 
force the people into submitting to its treatment. If the profession 
has the right to kill thousands by unnecessary operations, and by 
unsexing and other bungling and blundering treatment prevent at 
least 200,000 births each year, or 5,000,000 in the past twenty- 
five years, what could they do in the line of race-suicide if they 
had federal power to force submission? 



DR. TAIT S INFLUENCE. V 

DR. TAIT'S INFLUENCE ON OPERATIONS. 
Dr. Tait popularized the removal of not only the ovaries, 
but the Fallopian tubes and womb for pelvic abscesses. It was 
he who started the craze in operating for the removal of fibroid 
tumors. As this tumor is found in probably twenty-five per cent 
of women who do not even suspect that they have anything at all 
the matter with them, it can be seen how easily a surprise can be 
sprung on an unsuspecting woman by an expert gynecologist; and 
as his opinion is supreme when he says an operation is necessary, 
there is no one who can gainsay him. 

A reasoning reader should have no trouble in seeing that in 
diseases of women there is a large field for the ethical quack to 
exercise his professional prerogative and reap a rich harvest by 
plying his trade of imposing on the credulous. In this field we 
have two classes of professional men; namely, those whose judg- 
ments are blinded by their loyalty to science — their unquestioning 
devotion to authority — and those who take advantage of the 
public's respect for whatever modern medical science endorses. 
Both these classes arrive at the same end; namely, unnecessary 
mutilation of women. 

There have been thousands of women with tumors who 
have lived long and useful lives, ignorant of their affliction; on 
the other hand, there have been thousands who have been made 
very miserable by discovering that they had fibroids, who would 
have passed contented lives if they had been kept in ignorance of 
the growth. 

It will be said that women have been operated upon and 
their tumors removed and health restored. Yes; and there have 
been many more who did not recover health, and still others who 



10 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

died. It can truthfully be said that those who apparently needed 
an operation most were those who died, or who did not recover 
health and afterward died of some other disease manifestation 
caused by the same constitutional derangement that originally 
caused the tumor. 

UNNECESSARY OPERATIONS. 

Thousands have been operated upon for the removal of the 
womb, for displacements, and for small fibroids, who would not 
have known there was anything wrong with them if the belief had 
not been instilled into them by doctors who were more zealous than 
wise. Women have been partly to blame. There are so many 
who are so insanely fond of flattery that to receive it they are 
willing to swap their hopes of heaven for a little of the honey of 
hell; and others would rather die than reform bad habits. 

Nearly every symptom peculiar to deranged digestion, or that 
can be induced by perverted nutrition, has been attributed to 
fibroid disease; and when there is no fibroid or other disease of 
the womb, ovaries, tubes or appendix, the symptoms will be 
declared by modern medical science to be due to "change of life." 

The word "tumor" has been and is now the Open Sesame 
with which the surgeons are admitted into every abdomen; it is 
the charmed expression with which they dominate the people and 
force them through fear to submit to operations that are not more 
necessary than viscerating their skulls. 

THE WORD TUMOR USED TO COERCE THE TIMID. 

Many apply to me overcome with worry, having been told by 
reputable surgeons that they have fibroid tumors; that all the 
disagreeable symptoms they are suffering, including those that 
come from fear of an operation, are caused by the tumors; and 



THE ETHICAL QUACK. 1 1 

that there is positively no help for them, except to be operated 
upon. This frightens the unfortunate women still more, and 
further impairs their digestions and intensifies all previous symp- 
toms. These patients and their friends note that they are growing 
worse from day to day; but they little suspect that the most of 
it comes from worry. 

This is an artificial situation which the ethical quacks inten- 
tionally build, and of which they are not loath to take advantage. 
They put on their most sympathetic faces, modulate their voices 
to suit the occasion, and explain how necessary it is to have an 
operation as soon as possible. They take influential friends into 
their confidence — those who, the}) I?now 9 will put in the right Word 
at the right moment; and to these they impart their wisest opinions 
and ripest judgments. They detail their gravest fears; all, of 
course, in strict confidence; not "for the world" are the unfortunate 
victims to be permitted to know the gravity of the situation. 

I have had hundreds of women apply to me after being told 
that they could not live six months unless they submitted to an 
operation. On examination I would find that there was not the 
least excuse for such an opinion. Indeed, many had very little 
the matter with them, except the fear that had been generated by 
the representatives of modern medical science. I am sorry to say 
that a few were found who had no tumor at all, notwithstanding 
they had been told they did have one by professional men of 
standing. 

VERY FEW FIBROIDS REQUIRE AN OPERATION. 

Probably one case in a thousand of fibroid tumor really 
needs surgical interference. There is no excuse for the wholesale 
butchery of women for this so-called disease, except that it is a 



12 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

surgical craze, set in motion by Lawson Tait — one of the most 
reputable surgeons of the latter half of the nineteenth century. 
Why should he not be great, when he made it possible to slaughter 
women by the wholesale, and at the same time remain immune to 
all law against homicide? 

Professor Tait popularized operating for pyosalpinx (pus in 
the tubes), and other forms of abscesses in the pelvis. As to his 
skill in operating there can be no question; he was probably as 
nearly perfect as it is possible for a surgeon to become. But 
that does not alter the fact that the price humanity pays for a 
perfected surgeon is more than he is worth to humanity. In the 
first place, how many unnecessary operations does he have to per- 
form before it is no longer necessary for him to perform unneces- 
sary operations — when his judgment will be so perfect that there 
will no longer be any doubt about the benefit, or possible benefit, 
to be derived from a contemplated operation; when every case he 
operates upon will be necessary and a success? I do not mean 
by success that every case must or will recover; I mean that 
under the circumstances there is no other recourse — that there 
cannot be anything else done — and that it is humane to offer the 
operation as the only hope there is left. 

OPERATION AS A DERNIER RESORT. 
I know all about the argument made by surgical specialists 
to the effect that physicians frequently postpone calling surgeons 
until there is no hope of recovery, and as a dernier resort an 
operation is made, with the result that surgery is given a bad 
repute. This has been true in a small per cent of cases; but 
since fee-splitting has become so universal the pendulum has swung 
to the other extreme, and where scores once died from the need 



HOW MANY SURGEONS ARE PERFECT? 13 

of surgical treatment, hundreds now die from premature operations, 
and thousands are subjected to unnecessary operations, and suffer 
more or less from the after-effects of a distorted anatomism and 
the loss of an organ of more or less importance to the body. 

How many surgeons have been so perfected that they no 
longer perform unnecessary operations? The Lord only knows, 
and he won't tell. We have no history of a perfect surgeon since 
the first Exsector. "The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall 
upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs and closed 
up the flesh thereof; and of the rib * * * made he a 
woman * * *." (Gen. ii, 21, 22.) This is the first 
operation under hypnotism, without antiseptics and drainage, and 
the healing was by first intention. That is what can be called a 
perfect operation. The patient suffered no sequels or after-effects 
from it, except that he was compelled to enshrine the dissected 
part; and his male descendants have been making pilgrimages to 
and worshiping it ever since. This is the only successful attempt 
at preserving and perpetuating a pathological specimen in the 
world's history. 

But we do not demand so high a standard these days. 
However, we must demand a success that amounts to less than a 
massacre. How many surgeons have we had in the past fifty years 
who stand with Battey and Tait? Not many; but I will be 
liberal and say ten per cent. If these ten per cent, like Drs. 
Battey and Tait, succeed in the last end of their careers in per- 
forming five operations where not more than one is necessary, and 
the other ninety per cent of surgeons perform all the way from 
thirty to one hundred per cent more operations than are necessary, 
where is humanity bettered? 



14 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

If the best surgeons succeed in saving — really curing — 
twenty, and either kill or mutilate and more or less ruin the lives 
of eighty, is the work they do justifiable? 

It must be borne in mind that operations do not cure the 
diseases which made the operation necessary, or gave the excuse 
for its performance. 

In operating for abscess in the tubes or ovaries, the same 
laws are to be dealt with that we have in dealing with appendi- 
citis. Modern surgical science declares that all these cases must 
be operated upon. Why? Because the operations cure? Com- 
pared with the failures, the real cures are few. If an abscess is 
small and can be removed without infecting the patient, all is well ; 
but how many can be so successfully removed? Only a small 
per cent. And there is another small per cent who die in spite 
of the best operators; and then there is a large per cent who are 
not benefited, and many who are made worse by the operation. 
What becomes of those not operated upon? Many, I am sorry 
to say, are very miserable; for they have no treatment or advice 
that is of any value to them. The physician who believes in 
surgery for everything knows no other treatment to give; and if 
he does do anything, it will do no good, to say the least, and his 
influence is in the line of discouragement. To tell a patient that 
"nothing but an operation Tvill do any good, and unless it is per- 
formed very soon the chances are slim" is not conducive to build- 
ing up a patient's courage and hopefulness. Besides, worry and 
discouragement always complicate and intensify all symptoms. 

NATURE CAN AID HERSELF. 
Nature, unaided, is able to relieve herself of the accumula- 
tions of abscesses, if no complications have been broughjt about by 



SURGEONS BECOME RECKLESS. 15 

officiousness and rough handling, and the bad habits of life are 
corrected. 

Is my language too vigorous ? Are my charges too sweeping ? 
Do I mean that surgeons are dishonest? No! 

There is a tendency for surgery to build in the operator a 
reckless disregard of people's rights, and with a goodly per cent 
an indifference to actual loss of life. This callosity of conscience 
is gradually grown by oiling the points of friction with the belief 
that surgery is a great art, and that great surgeons always have 
the good of their patients at heart. Unfortunately, surgeons are 
human, and it is human to desire to go to the top of the profession ; 
and there is no hope of getting there without doing much surgery. 
The more cases operated upon, the more dexterity, improved 
technique, dignity, authority and higher standing in the profession 
there will be. Every case adds to the list and is one step up the 
ladder of fame and fortune. Is there any wonder that the 
surgeons aspirations continually eclipse the patient's rights? A 
few may be large enough to do unto others as they would be 
done by, but all such are in obscurity. How could it be other- 
wise? If a surgeon is not in obscurity, he is operating daily; yes, 
hourly; and if he is operating on people daily and hourly, he is 
certainly operating to build his reputation, and not to build the 
health of his patients. 

The code of ethics saves him from criminal prosecution; for 
a physician who turns state's evidence is a quack and a man of no 
character, and fifty thousand physicians will swear this to be true, 
rather than permit the code-protected man to suffer. Besides, 
society is used to believing surgeons great men, and great men 



16 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

belong to the elect, and the elect are God's appointed; and there 
you are! 

AVERAGE CITIZENS ARE AVERAGE CRIMINALS. 

Average intelligence cannot believe that average professional 
men are guilty of traits of character that criminals have, and the 
reason for this non-belief is that they know nothing about the 
psychology of the average professional man and of criminals. In- 
deed, there are very few people who know that average criminal* 
are average citizens; that they are no worse and no better than 
those from whom they have been singled out and barred from 
liberty. Those branded criminal have met their Waterloo, while 
their peers may or may not meet theirs; if they do not, it will be 
more from luck than from good management. People of like 
mental caliber act the same under like circumstances. 

Not every woman builds a fibroid tumor whose elimination is 
perverted by wrong life. There must be a local irritation and deter- 
mination of blood to the generative organs. Appendicitis, typhoid 
fever, pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma, goiter, et al., are different 
local manifestations of a common physical state brought on by ener- 
vation and faulty elimination. Just what determines the localiza- 
tion of disease may be one or more influences. There may be a 
prenatal tendency, and occupation, environment and accidental 
injury practically cover the field of exciting causes. 

The mental is subject to as great a variety of influences as 
the physical, and at what tangent a mind made morbid by unusual 
irritation will fly cannot be more than conjectured, unless all the 
elements representing cause and their proportion are known. 

It is nonsense and a curse to society to continue to believe 
that criminals are born criminals. There is no more truth in it 



PROPAGATION INHIBITED. 1 7 

than there is in the belief that people are born sick, or inherit their 
diseases. 

Diseases are built out of our daily habits, and crime is one 
type- J ust what form crime will take will depend upon the seat 
of irritation. 

NATURE INHIBITS PROPAGATION. 

Nature puts a bar to the propagation of diseases, both mental 
and physical. When an organism is so diseased that it must 
transmit the disease if it propagates, sterility prevents the crime. 
This is all so true that I must adhere to the truth that crime is all 
a matter of mixing incompatible psychological elements. The 
so-called criminal is as greatly surprised at his acts as are his 
friends ; and while a community is horrified at an unnatural crime, 
every member of it is possessed of attributes that are capable of a 
like explosion if, unfortunately, he is thrown in contact with the 
mental elements that are incompatible and sufficiently irritating. 

Ambition, necessity and environment mould circumstances as 
they must; and when individual rights stand in the way, so much 
the worse for individual rights. 

Doctors are a superior class, and superiority brooks no oppo- 
sition. The physician's psychology gives him the right of way 
over those whom nature has placed in his hands, and the latter 
class acknowledges his superiority and his right by passively sub- 
mitting. The distance between rights by superiority — divine 
rights — and oppression is not great; and that is where the matter 
stands today. The people are oppressed; they are in a state of 
slavery; and when this state evolves to injustice and tyranny, 
revolution follows. Society is in a state of revolution, so far as 
doctors and patients are concerned. The brighter and more know- 



18 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

ing slaves (patients) are repudiating their masters, and those too 
ignorant to understand the situation are in danger of being awak- 
ened; and that is why the profession is struggling, as it never 
struggled before, to retain its hold on the people. 

My part in this great struggle is to enlighten the slaves, and 
to do so it is necessary to continually explain the position of the 
masters and the slaves. 

THE WORLD MOVES. 

When the black slaves were taken from their masters, during 
the Civil War, the masters felt that their rights had been outraged ; 
but now that slavery and emancipation are matters of history in 
this country, those who were in favor of chattel slavery are against 
it. The world has moved on. 

So it will be when the iron grip of an arrogant profession 
is broken, and the people are freed from the bigotry and tyranny 
of a self-sufficient, self-justified, cruel profession. The people 
will have their rights without oppression, and the profession will 
be able to look back on its present-day brigandism with a sigh of 
relief, and will congratulate itself that it has an opportunity to 
expand. Oppressors and bigots never expand until cured of their 
pathological psychology. 

This article is simply a preliminary to a study in diseases 
peculiar" to women. In the next number the simpler or more 
common diseases will be taken up and illuminated from a common- 
sense standpoint. 

It is my intention to attempt to show that the diseases of 
women have the same simple origin that other diseases have; that 
diseases of the pelvis are local manifestations of a deranged con- 



I SHALL MAKE IT PLAIN. 19 

stitution; and that they require more of constitutional treatment 
than of local treatment. 

I shall show, to those who are capable of being shown, that 
the maze of obscurity or incomprehensibleness commonly ascribed 
to these diseases does not exist. I shall try to make it plain that 
the refinement of specialization has awed the average physician 
into believing that no one but a specialist can treat women's dis- 
eases, and this has made it easy for gynecologists to refine all 
common sense out of the treatment. 

The tendency has been for the past three decades to uss 
surgery for the cure of all these diseases. Why? Because of 
the inability to do anything else. It is cut or do nothing. 



CHAPTER II. 



Influences Favorable to Bringing on Diseases 
of Women. 




HERE is one supreme truth that should never 
be lost sight of in thinking and writing about 
diseases and their causation; namely: local dis- 
eases are self-limited and ephemeral without a 
constitutional derangement to keep them in activ- 
ity. A local disease cannot thrive in an organism 
possessed of a normal amount of resistance ; or, to put the statement 
in the form of a bull: local diseases cannot thrive in a healthy body. 
There are few people, if indeed there are any, who are not 
subjected to the usual exciting causes, and the only rational reason 
why they are not all affected in the same way — thrown into 
invalidism — is because they have sufficient resistance to overcome 
disease-producing influences. 

Female diseases, or diseases peculiar to women, will not de- 
velop in any woman who is in health. There must be enervation, 
with retention of waste products — failure of elimination; the auto- 
toxemia to which I so frequently refer — before these diseases, or 
any other diseases, can develop. There is one notable exception; 
namely, poisoning — when septic material is pent up. When septic 
material can drain, it cannot cause infection. 

Attentive readers are familiar with my frequent allusions to 
constitutional derangements brought on from autotoxemia. This 
self -poisoning may be brought on in many ways. The most 



WOMEN OVEREAT. 21 

common cause is from overeating. Women are more inclined to 
overeat than men, for they are more at home and around where 
food is, hence are oftener tempted; men have the tobacco habit, 
which, as I have shown in volume two of my "Criticism of the 
Practice of Medicine," takes the place of food and saves many 
men from gourmandizing. Overeating need not necessarily mean 
consuming food in unusually large quantities. If the nerve energy 
is used up in directions other than in digestion, it stands to reason 
that it cannot be used in taking care of food. Digestive power is 
possessed in varying degrees, ranging from small to large. These 
facts must be considered in the summing up of the data for diag- 
nosis. 

WOMEN ARE SUBJECT TO MANY ENERVATING INFLUENCES. 

Besides overeating and improper eating, women are subjected 
to many nerve-depressing influences that bring on enervation, which 
means lost resistance. 

Close housing (which is another name for oxygen starvation) 
is a common source of much lost resistance; and not only does 
this include insufficient air, but bad air — air charged with im- 
purities. A very large per cent of homes are ruined from a 
health point of view because of the habit men have of smoking 
in them. In the winter, when houses are closed to keep out 
the cold, pure air, the indoor air, which is filthy enough at best, 
is made rank by tobacco smoke settling in carpets and hang- 
ings. There are but one or two nauseating odors that exceed in 
rankness stale tobacco smoke, and they are sulphurated hydrogen 
and the odor from the skunk; perhaps valerian comes in as a live 
second to a dank, dead "snipe." I have seen wives and children 
suffering from a pernicious form of anaemia brought on by living 



22 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

and sleeping in houses that would give a hog the cholera and a 
dog the rabies, if these animals were forced to live all winter in 
such atmosphere. The men who build such refined torture for 
their families get out in the morning and are not back to enjoy 
their lung- and blood-destroyer until night. I have seen heads of 
such families complain bitterly that their noses were kept on the 
financial grindstone all the time paying doctors' bills and hiring 
domestic help because of sick wives. Any man who thinks that 
he can, by feeing doctors and sanitariums, secure health for a 
nervous wife, so long as he keeps her inhaling the atmosphere of a 
home ruined by tobacco, is certainly living (expectantly) in a 
"fool's paradise." 

Enervation is brought on many women by worry, discontent, 
envy, jealousy, domestic unhappiness and idleness. Worry about 
not getting on in the world — not being able to dress and do as 
women in better circumstances do — keeps many women in ill- 
health. Worry ruins digestion by using up the nerve force; then 
the fermentation of food that must necessarily follow poisons the 
blood and secretions, checks elimination, following which the 
injured organs of the body take on disease. When this state 
is once evolved, it will continue in spite of the best treatment, unless 
the woman can be taught to give up worrying, become philo- 
sophical, and allow her mind and body to relax — cultivate poise. 

Fear: There are thousands of women living in fear who 
keep it to themselves. Many men who stand well among men and 
in the community in v/hich they live keep their families in a state of 
fear that is disease-producing. The divorce mills would run full 
capacity, night and day, if the women who now smother their 
feeling for the sake of home and children could be assured of a 



DISCONTENT. 23 

living without their husbands. A doctor who believes cures can 
be made under such circumstances is entertaining a delusion. Fear 
and anxiety in time will harden the arteries and bring about pre- 
mature old age. 

Discontent: Thousands of women live in a state of discon- 
tent. What they have in health, home and family they do not 
appreciate. Every other husband is kinder, better and more con- 
siderate than their husbands. Every other home has more of com- 
fort. Other wives have more money spent on them than they have. 
I have known women to complain of not being able to dress as 
well as so-and-so, when in truth so-and-so did not spend as much 
as they did. The real and only difference between the women 
was that Mrs. So-and-So possessed contentment, good taste and 
thrift. 

SOME PEOPLE CAN'T BE MADE HAPPY. 

No amount of money spent on the complainer, fault-finder 
and grumbler can make her happy or look well. A life spent in 
fault-finding and discontent will convert the most beautiful face 
into one that is repelling. Bad mental habits build faces to corre- 
spond. The most beautiful must necessarily be made up of the 
most lovable traits of character, or it will not last. Not all is in 
looks; for a fruit may have a fine exterior, yet lack the flavor and 
aroma of some other that is comparatively quite inferior in looks. 
So far as men and women are concerned, aroma and flavor are 
everything; and these qualities are psychical. Mind will save us 
all. What is the matter with the fool? Lack of mind, isn't it? 
Well and good. Is it a sign of wisdom to fret, worry, grumble 
and find fault? No. Then it means that whoever does it is a 



24 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

fool to just that extent. Getting on in the world means growing 
wiser — ceasing to be a fool. 

Why does a girl marry without giving due consideration to 
the income — the wherewithal to insure comfort and some luxury — 
and then in a few years afterwards sigh and long for what she 
refused to provide for herself, and settle down to cultivating envy 
and discontent? Because she is a fool and refuses to outgrow 
it. Knowledge and industry are antidotes to the misfortune of 
being a fool. It is not necessary to live and die a fool; it is a 
disease that the patient can cure by the aid of the right kind of 
a doctor; drugs, vaccination and surgery will not cure it. 

We often hear of people who are going to be happy and 
contented when their ships come in, for then they will have just 
what they want. Never was there such a mistake made; content- 
ment is a habit requiring daily cultivation, and if retained it requires 
a lifetime of patient effort. People cannot live in discontent and 
then all at once be transposed into a state of contentment by a 
smile of fortune. Every reader must have known of people who 
lived in discontent because the houses they lived in were not large 
enough, nor grand enough; and when they happened to get their 
large house, their happiness was short-lived, for they soon found 
that their cares were increased in like proportion. 

PEOPLE DECEIVE THEMSELVES. 
Most poor men would like the fortunes of rich men, but they 
would balk at their responsibilities. People of ordinary means 
do not know that rich men cultivate the art of appearing happy; 
most of them are blase. Those who are not, deceive themselves 
as well as others, until they join the ranks of the surfeited. The 
responsibility and care of great wealth antidote enjoyment to such 



CONTENTMENT A HABIT. 25 

an extent that what appears to be a life of enjoyment is in reality 
wormwood and gall. 

People who are always going to be happy never are. 

Contentment is a habit of mind and does not depend upon 
friends, fame nor fortune. Those who can live happily without 
friends, fame and fortune can live happily with them. To the 
contented and poised person every advance and every new re- 
sponsibility is accepted as an additional pleasure. It is the very 
busy, poised person who can find time to take on new responsi- 
bilities. 

A wise man has said: "Happiness is like manna; it is to 
be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; 
it will not be accumulated; nor have we to go out of ourselves 
or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from 
heaven at our doors. 

"Seek happiness for its own sake, and you will not find it; 
seek for duty, and happiness will follow as the shadow comes with 
the sunshine." 

Rochefoucauld (rosh-fu-ko) says: "Few things are needful 
to make the wise man happy, but nothing satisfies the fool; and 
this is the reason why so many of mankind are miserable." 

Johnson says: "The fountain of content must spring up in 
the mind, and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as 
to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will 
waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he 
proposes to remove." 

Addison says: "True happiness is of a retired nature, and 
an enemy to pomp and noise; * * * false happiness loves 
to be in a crowd and to draw the eyes of the world upon her. 



26 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

She does not receive satisfaction from the applause which she 
gives herself, but from the admiration which she raises in others. 
She flourishes in courts and palaces, theaters and assemblies, and 
has no existence but when she is looked upon." 

ENVY AND JEALOUSY BUILD DISEASE. 

Envy and jealousy derange digestion and blood-making by 
causing an acid state of the secretions which overstimulates the 
nervous system and brings on enervation. Nothing else impairs 
health so surely as jealousy, and there is no cure without removing 
the cause. Secret jealousy is an eating ulcer gnawing at the vitals 
and developing all the symptoms that diseased bodies are heir 
to. There are many women going from specialist to specialist 
seeking cures, but they are on a fool's errand so long as the cause, 
jealousy, remains. Many go to the operating table once, twice 
and oftener, if they do not die there the first or second time; but 
the surgeon fails to cut out the cause. 

Women eaten up by jealousy make very unsatisfactory 
mothers. This state of mind leads to neglect of duties, and often 
a determination to shirk responsibility. Not anything else ruins 
home-life so completely as jealousy. 

Domestic unhappiness, whatever the cause may be, is sure 
to bring on ill-health among women. Children suffer in body and 
mind, and their development is greatly impaired. There are as 
many causes as there are people. When people marry with the 
mistaken idea that marriage is a form of chattel slavery, and the 
man or woman dominated with this idea proceeds to assert his or 
her authority, the result is they have a "Kilkenny cat" time of it. 

If married people could take a sensible view of married life 
and treat each other as they did before marriage, there would be 



SELFISHNESS. 27 

more happy families. Both parties to the contract should try to 
please; for when one must do it all, the load becomes too heavy. 
Many human beings are easily spoiled. Those who shirk duty 
become very exacting ; the more they have done for them, the more 
they demand, and the result is too often a "rough house." 

Selfishness in either wife or husband is fatal to domestic 
happiness. I have seen husbands so sordid that they would feast 
down town on a meal that would cost twice as much as the food 
the wife and children were expected to consume in two days. 
Cigars and alcoholics frequently cost more than the table expenses 
in the home. Such selfishness as this on the part of a man who 
demands economy in household expenses will eat in on the nerves 
of a sensitive wife and ruin her health. 

On the other hand, some wives are indulged until they are 
ruined. A man who will strain his credit and hamper his success 
in life by foolishly indulging a senseless wife will have an invalid 
on his hands; for a woman who has no better sense than to take 
advantage of and abuse an indulgent husband will play the sick 
racket if necessary to accomplish her purpose in securing indul- 
gences that would be impossible except to meet the extraordinary 
necessities of changing climate for health or buying a surgical 
operation, the fees for which in some instances have been known 
to be clandestinely divided between the patient and her surgeon. 

QUARRELING RUINS HEALTH. 

Many families fall into the very vulgar habit of quarreling 
all the time. I have known this habit indulged to such an extreme 
as to cause both husband and wife to be invalids. When quarrel- 
ing in a family has been reduced to a fine art, it does not require 
a provocation on either side. If the wife puts on a blue dress, 



28 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

the husband is mad because she did not put on some other color; 
any color beats the blue, except when she happens to choose 
another color herself. The blue dress is quite enough to furnish 
a quarrel for the entire day. Each day is sufficient unto itself in 
furnishing topics for a "rough house." 

Such insignificant subjects as the tint of the sky at sunrise will 
start a quarrel. John calls to Mary in the morning: "Look and 
see v/hat a beautiful sunrise there is this morning; the heavens are 
lighted up with a rich orange glow." Whereupon Mary replies: 
"You are color-blind; that is a golden glow. Your whole family 
are alike; your sisters put on the most shocking combinations." 
From this start, the quarrel is on for the day. 

"Who is that man going by the house?" Mary answers: 
"That's Mr. Jones." 

"No, that's not Jones; don't you know Mr. Jones better 
than that? It is strange that you appear never to know anyone. 
Jones never wears a green necktie." 

"That was a blue tie; what's the matter with you? I tell 
you you are color-blind." 

If friends call on these people, they are dragged into their 
disputes whether they will or not. All their friends know of their 
bad habits and avoid them as much as possible. Such a life is 
not worth the living, and ill-health and early death must be the 
consequences. 

TO BREAK INTO SOCIETY CAUSES ILL HEALTH. 

The Social Act is another prolific cause of sickness. To 

break into society and "do it" as one must to "keep up" will test 

the health qualities of the finest constitution. The leaders, those 

who are sure of their positions, are not broken down so soon. 



MENTAL STRAIN. 29 

Those who suffer most are those who are not quite so sure of their 
standing, and those known as "climbers." These people live in a 
state of worry and anxiety. They scan the society items to see if 
their names are there. It is as important to them that their names 
appear in the lists of those who are entertained by the Razzle 
Dazzles and the Mug Wumps as for the Christians' names to be 
found on the roster of the church triumphant. When these people 
have a few friends in to spend the evening or at lunch, the news- 
paper reporters are coerced, either physically or financially, to 
write the affair up. All who were there, and those who were not 
there but Tvere invited, are reported as being guests. 

The mental strain of those who try to hold on to the social 
whirl is health-destroying. The financial strain and the effort 
required to appear to make good are nerve-destroying; then add 
to this the irregular habits, wrong eating, and the usual tax on a 
wife and mother, and we have enough load on a woman to build 
disease and shorten life. 

HEELS VS. BRAINS. 

Then there is a large class of women who use their heels in 
place of brains. They are pacing in a ring from morning till 
night. If they tell it, they have been working hard all day; they 
are always as busy as "cranberry merchants." If they succeed in 
butchering a few slices of bread from a baker's loaf, boiling a pot 
of decoction, misnamed coffee, and get all this on the breakfast 
table within an hour, they will be exhausted by the effort and talk 
about getting breakfast in a manner that would lead a stranger to 
suppose there had been an elaborate spread. When such women 
are not playing circus — cantering around in a ring like a dog chas- 



30 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

ing his tail — they are wearing themselves and their friends out tell- 
ing of how much hard work they do. 

There is a small class of women who are troubled with 
what can well be called the filthy touch, or dirtophobia; they 
really wear themselves out taking care of a five- or six-room house. 
They will expend as much energy as should be spent on a house 
two or three times as large. These women find dirt where a micro- 
scope could not. Every metallic surface from the brass tacks in 
the stair's carpet to the stovepipe must reflect equal to a French 
plate mirror, the latter being a luxury that such housewives seldom 
if ever have. It is labor from morning till night with these women ; 
and too often they are in love with their houses and work more 
than with their husbands. The husbands of such wives frequently 
find more comfort "down town" than in the bosoms of their fami- 
lies, for they are made to feel that they should take a bath and 
change their clothes before they are fit to enter their own homes. 

On the other hand, there are homes presided over by easy- 
going women who are dirt-blind. Filth and waste prohibit home- 
ownership, and when dirt, vermin and disease usurp the premises, 
such families move to get away from it. They go on the theory 
that it is cheaper to move than to clean house. 

I have endeavored to point out a few of the many ways in 
which women cultivate the ground-work for ill health. 

Nerve energy is required to keep the various organs of the 
body functioning, and when it is drawn upon beyond normal physi- 
ological repair, metabolism is imperfectly carried on, the equili- 
brium between waste and repair is lost, and elimination fails to 
carry off the waste. When this state is brought about, the catching 
of colds becomes frequent, the mucous membranes of vulnerable 



LEUCORRHEA. 31 

organs take on a catarrhal inflammation, which is another name for 
vicarious elimination. Instead of recognizing catarrhal inflamma- 
tions as local diseases, they should be looked upon as conservative 
processes for giving exits to humors that fail to be oxidized and 
eliminated through natural channels. 

THE MEANING OF LEUCORRHEA. 

Leucorrhea of a catarrhal nature indicates an inflammatory 
state of the mucous membrane of the neck or body of the womb, 
or both. When occurring in young, unmarried women it is brought 
on because of an exaggerated hyperaemia of the reproductive 
organs. These young people have been subjected to overstimula- 
tion; their emotional natures have been fed by a morbid mind. 
Their reading has not been well selected; their company has been 
unfitted for them ; often there is a precocious sex development from 
overstimulating foods and mental suggestions of a vicious character ; 
all of which inclines to bring too much blood to the reproductive 
organs. This being the condition during the intermenstrual periods, 
when menstruation comes on there is much engorgement — conges- 
tion — and the mucous membrane is so thickened and the submucous 
tissue so engorged that the neck of the uterus is closed and the 
menstrual fluid cannot pass out without pain. 

This is the true state of the reproductive organs when the 
patients complain of painful and profuse menstruations. The con- 
tinuous engorgement of the parts, with the menstrual-period exag- 
geration, soon develops catarrhal inflammation, and unless the 
causes are removed, engorgement will continue, and the inflamma- 
tion will be followed by ulceration. 

In the above analysis I have endeavored to show all, or nearly 
all, the physical and mental elements required to build a constitu- 



32 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

tional and local derangement which forms the bases of all the 
diseases peculiar to the reproductive organs ; in truth, all the pelvic 
diseases peculiar to men as well as women. 

On this stock is grafted every disease that is treated by 
gynecologists. 



CHAPTER III. 



Leucorrhea, Dysmenorrhea, Flexions. 




[O EPITOMIZE what has gone before in the preced- 

Tl ing chapters, I will say that it is impossible to establish 
I* a local disease without inoculation, unless there is a con- 
stitutional derangement ; hence, to accomplish more than 
palliation of female diseases, all local treatment must be 
accompanied by constitutional treatment, and this treat- 
ment must consist of correcting the habits of life, both of a mental 
and a physical character, that have had to do with bringing about 
enervation and imperfect elimination. 

To make it clear to the reader, I must repeat, and continue to 
repeat, that any habit of body or mind that is stimulating, if prac- 
ticed a sufficient length of time, must end in enervation and auto- 
toxemia. 

The continuous use of any stimulating foods beyond the 
body's requirements — even the staff of life, bread, or meat — will 
bring about enervation. Many, even physicians, believe that no 
harm can come from food. 

Alcohol and tobacco are recognized by most people as 
capable of doing harm when used to excess, but very few are 
willing to believe that the moderate use of these stimulants is 
injurious. The truth, however, is that one smoke or one drink a 



34 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

day, added to the usual overstimulation from food, brings evil 
results. 

Coffee and tea not only bring on enervation, but they check 
elimination and hasten old age. When the body is overstimulated 
daily, or the nerve energy depressed by anger, hate, worry, or las- 
civious longings, resistance is lost, and disease comes to stay, unless 
the habits that brought it on are corrected. 

To cure autotoxemia, all bad habits of mind and body must 
be given up. It is folly to treat a local disease, or remove it with 
the knife, giving no attention to autotoxemia, and expect to cure the 
patient. 

A little reasoning is necessary. In the first place, settle the 
following questions : Is it possible to break the body down by bad 
habits? If so, what are bad habits? Is it possible to work too 
hard; eat too much; drink too much; play overmuch; sleep too 
long; enjoy too much; bathe too long and too often; get too hot 
or too cold; or wear too much or too little clothing? Is it possible 
to overwork or underwork the emotional nature? Does anger, fear, 
joy, envy, spite, jealousy, prejudice, hate or lust cause ill-health? 
Does the practice of any of the habits of life to excess cause ill- 
health? Will the neglect of duty cause ill-health? Can dishon- 
esty, lying, deceit, disloyalty or dishonor in any form break down 
the health? 

If I have a reader who is unwilling to believe that the fore- 
going bad habits can cause ill-health, he should stop reading my 
writings and take advice and health education from doctors who 
believe that germs are the sole cause of disease. 



REGULAR TREATMENT DOES NOT CURE. 35 

Those who can see in wrong life a sufficient cause for disease 
are mentally prepared to receive relief and cure from a rational 
system based on correcting all errors of life. 

I am criticised for frequently saying that regular medical treat- 
ment does not cure — that doctors who practice according to modern 
medical science cannot cure disease. Of course, nature cures when 
there is any curing done, but nature must have help by way of the 
removal of obstructions to normal functioning. This being a self- 
evident truth, how can a treatment, that seldom, if ever, takes notice 
of basal cause, do more than palliate? For example: A woman 
who has a severe endometritis (chronic inflammation — catarrh — of 
the womb) is in a state of enervation. To cure the local disease 
requires something more than local treatment. "Yes," says any 
good "regular" doctor, "the patient needs good, nourishing food." 
But food is a stimulant, and overstimulation has brought on the 
enervation. The enervation may have been aided by one or a 
dozen bad physical or mental habits, such as have been mentioned. 

ENERVATION SHOULD BE CURED FIRST. 

Before any local disease is cured, enervation must be cured, 
and this requires tact and skill in manipulating the treatment of the 
patient; for more or less nourishment is needed and must be given, 
and it must be of a kind, quality and amount that will sustain life, 
but not add to the enervation by overstimulating. 

Correcting the eating and taking the proper care of the body 
are some of the leading auxiliaries in the line of cure, but he who 
would undertake to cure female diseases without correcting bad 
mental states invites failure. 

Worry creates indigestion; indigestion fills the bowels with 
gas; and, on account of the absorbed acids, the normal alkalinity 



36 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

of the blood is lessened, which gives rise to irritability. Gas disten- 
tion of the bowels brings on uterine, ovarian and kidney misplace- 
ments. Surgery can remove these organs, but the knife cannot 
remove worry. 

Leucorrhea is a discharge of a fluid character from the vagina. 
There are several varieties. The most common are mucous or 
catarrhal, watery and purulent ; and then there are mixed varieties, 
made up of mucus and pus, mucus and water, etc. 

Leucorrhea is a symptom; the catarrhal variety is always in- 
dicative of an inflammation of the mucous membrane. When pro- 
fuse, it indicates that there is a large surface involved, probably the 
lining membrane of the uterus. When this discharge is slight, only 
the neck of the womb is involved. The intensity of the constitu- 
tional derangement has much to do with the quantity of the dis- 
charge. When there is much enervation and suppression of elimi- 
nation, especially of the cutaneous surface, favoring the catching of 
frequent colds, a local inflammation of any of the pelvic organs 
extends very rapidly, apparently for the purpose of establishing a 
vicarious discharge — a vicarious elimination. 

The more imperfect the systemic elimination, the more dis- 
charge there will be from the uterus, if the uterine mucous mem- 
brane proves to be the point of least resistance; but if the lungs 
should be the vulnerable point, then the vicarious drainage will 
take place from them, and the disease is called pneumonia, bron- 
chitis, or possibly tuberculosis. 

When the systemic and local conditions are catarrhal, bruis- 
ing, abrading or tearing the tissues furnishes a focal point for pent- 
up humors to secure an exit. 



ENCUMBERED. 37 

PAINFUL MENSTRUATION. 

Young, unmarried women, and married women who have not 
given birth to children, suffer much more from painful menstruation 
than those who have borne children. The cause is not understood. 

Young women who are victims of painful menstruation have 
autotoxemia. The rule is that their mothers were autotoxemic 
before them, and the children were born encumbered — as babies 
they were too heavy. All children exceeding six or seven pounds 
at birth are autotoxemic ; however, children are more nearly healthy 
at birth than their mothers, for they are nourished through the 
placenta, which acts as a purifier of the mother's blood. There are 
safeguards thrown around children from conception to weaning 
time, which, if not broken down, start every child out on the road 
of life in much better condition than its parents. 

Those who are born encumbered find a domestic environment 
to match. They are fed and cared for in a manner that adds to 
their inheritance, so that by the time puberty arrives they have 
developed an autotoxemic state that is marked by catarrhal inflam- 
mations of different mucous membranes. As school children, they 
had the catching-cold habit. They were troubled with nasal 
catarrh, adenoids, tonsillitis and other children's diseases. 

When puberty is attained, the reproductive organs take on 
their normal functioning; but when there is a chronic catarrh, or a 
chronic autotoxemic state, the normally increased flow of blood to 
these organs is intensified to such a degree that at the menstrual 
period this influx amounts to congestion. As a result of these 
monthly congestions, inflammation develops, marked by painful 
menstruation and leucorrhea; the latter will appear a day or two 
before menstruation and last for a few days after. 



38 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

The cause of the pain is an overengorged or congested state 
of the ovaries and mucous membrane of the womb. Gradually the 
mucous membrane becomes permanently thickened, thus lessening 
the caliber of the canal in the neck of the womb. Not only is the 
mucous membrane thickened, but the submucous tissues and mus- 
cular structure gradually become infiltrated and hardened, so that 
the normal elasticity is lost. 

While this change is taking place, indigestion, with its accom- 
panying distention of the bowels from gas, is playing its part in 
developing misplacements. The reproductive organs at this stage 
are in a hypersensitive state, and there is more or less fixation ; that 
is, the parts are more or less rigid. The abdominal muscles are 
tense and fixed, as are also the muscles of the pelvis. The gas 
distention gives pain by its downward pressure, the womb is rigidly 
held by this general fixation of the muscles, and the downward 
pressure upon it causes it to become flexed; and this is particularly 
favored when the body of the womb is not pronouncedly involved 
in the inflammation and is more movable than its neck. 

UTERINE FLEXIONS. 
When the womb is ante-flexed — bent forward — or retro- 
flexed — bent backward — the pelvic derangement is bilateral ; 
when the flexion is lateral, it indicates that the pelvic derangement 
is unilateral, meaning that one side only is involved in the fixed 
state, with the opposite side more or less free from the effects of 
contraction. 

I have seen cases that had developed such a rigid state of the 
abdomen and pelvic organs that there was no relaxation except 
when the patient was asleep; and, indeed, the rigidity is often the 
cause of insomnia. 



EXAMINATIONS OBJECTIONABLE. 39 

This on-guard state, when of long standing, is the cause of 
more suffering than the disease which the guard was established to 
protect from pressure and jolting. 

Treatment: The treatment for this disease consists in right- 
ing the life. In extremely bad cases, the woman should be put to 
bed and fasted until completely relaxed. The profession commits 
the inexcusable blunder of subjecting many of these cases to the 
knife. Forcible dilation and curetage is a common treatment, but 
the relief is of very short duration. When this treatment is given 
married women, they frequently become pregnant before the parts 
relapse into the original state. This is believed to be a desirable 
sequence to the curetment, but, according to my observation, it is not 
an unmixed good, for the hardened state of the neck of the womb 
is not fully remedied by pregnancy, and when labor comes on, the 
patient suffers more pain and has a longer confinement than is nat- 
ural; besides, the neck of the womb is always more or less lacer- 
ated. 

Young, single women should not be subject to vaginal exami- 
nation, but should have all bad habits of body and mind corrected. 
The general health must be built up. Cold sponge baths, followed 
by skin friction and much exercise in the open air, are desirable. 
The eating should be plain and simple. Meat should not be taken 
oftener than once a day, and, until gas formation is overcome, 
potatoes and foods made from grains should not be eaten. Fruits, 
simple vegetables and salads, vegetable soups and the dairy prod- 
ucts are admissible. The dairy products, except butter, should not 
be eaten unless the bowels are regular. 

When the menstruation begins, with its accompanying pain, 
the patient should take a hot bath. The water must be as hot as 



40 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

can be borne, and the bath should be prolonged until freedom 
from pain is had, even if it requires a half-hour or more time. 

A young lady suffering intense pain from this cause should 
give up her social functions until well. 

To epitomize : The cure for this disease is to practice common 
sense in the care of the mind and body. 

Married women may be treated a little differently. If judi- 
cious local treatment can be given, the cure is hastened. The gal- 
vanic current will hasten the softening of the neck, and cupping and 
withdrawing the excess of blood will relieve the congestion. This 
may be done twice a week, or once or twice just before menstrua- 
tion, and twice, three days apart, after menstruation. 

It is impossible to cure this disease if the patient will not give 
up dinners and teas; and those who are unfortunate in having a 
cause for jealousy, or who are jealous without a cause, need not 
hope to get well while they maintain such a state of mind. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Endometritis and Endocervicitis. 




Tb^^" "^^J^EFINITION: Inflammation of the lining mem- 
1 brane of the cavity and neck of the womb. 

Inflammation was referred to when describ- 
ing anteflexion and retroflexion, but the inflam- 
mation accompanying these displacements is in 
reality only the primary stage of what later de- 
velops into the diseases which are the subjects 
of this writing. 

In referring to the article on versions, or flexions (flexion is 
an extreme type of version), the reader will be reminded of the 
systemic derangement that favors the development of all pelvic 
disorders. This should always be held in mind, for primarily 
there is always the same constitutional dyscrasia acting as a 
basic cause for all chronic pelvic inflammations, and — need I 
repeat? — for every other persistent inflammation. 

Those mothers who have suffered during single life from 
painful menstruation, excessive menstruation and the accompany- 
ing nervous derangements, such as headache, neuralgia, eye- 
strain, dyspeptic symptoms of all kinds, constipation, gas dis- 
tention of the bowels, heart palpitation, short breath, sharp cutting 
pains* at times in chest and abdomen, swollen mammas or en- 
largement of the glands of the breasts (sometimes erroneously 



42 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

diagnosed cancer) , will suffer one or more tears of greater or less 
importance in the neck or mouth of the womb during their first 
confinements, and subsequent births usually add to the first injury. 
The reason the neck of the womb tears is because it has 
lost its natural elasticity from the hardening of the tissues re- 
sulting from the causes before mentioned. 

WHY WOMEN DO NOT GET UP STRONG. 

When a mother, after any labor, fails to get up strong and 
well, it is safe to assume that she has received an injury to the 
neck of her womb, and the misfortune has been followed with 
more or less septic infection. 

Septic infection further impairs the already deranged blood, 
so these unfortunate women are pale and are said to be anemic; 
but they are really suffering from pus absorption. 

This blood-poisoning, when severe, added to the previous 
autotoxemia, causes possibly a fatal peritonitis; or, if not so in- 
tense, a milk-leg, or pelvic abscess; or, if fortunate enough to 
escape the severer forms of inflammation, these patients will not 
escape developing a local inflammation . and ulceration of the 
injured parts. 

Following such confinements, the womb fails to involute 
(become reduced to normal size), the neck as well as the body 
of the womb remains heavy, and the walls are thickened from 
two to six or more times the normal thickness. The torn and 
bruised tissues will at best take on a low grade of inflammation 
and ulceration, and there will be a heavy, yellowish, catarrhal 
leucorrhea exuding from the ulceration, and a thick, tenacious, 
transparent discharge from the non-ulcerating surfaces. The neck 
of the womb is so thick that the lacerated parts separate widely, 



GRANULAR INFLAMMATION. 43 

and look very angry and formidable. The red, granular sur- 
face is sensitive to the touch, especially at the bottoms of the 
angles of the lacerations, and bleeds easily. A slight rubbing 
with cotton, sufficient to remove the' tenacious secretions from the 
surface, is quite enough to start the blood to flowing. 

When this disease is fully developed, the general health im- 
pairment is very great; all previous symptoms are exaggerated, 
and the unfortunate woman complains of a weak back; backache; 
aching in the back and hips, extending down the limbs to the 
lower part of the legs; heavy, dragging sensations in the lower 
part of the abdomen; at times, burning in urinating; wakefulness; 
headache; irregular appetite; heavy, languid, tired feelings; fre- 
quent constipation; piles; and many women suffer from despond- 
ency. The foundation for despondency often arises from the 
fact that these mothers? blame themselves for keeping up an ex- 
pense which the family income can ill afford. The expenses for 
nurse, doctor's bills and domestic help, instead of ending as cal- 
culated in advance, continue with no promise of a cessation. 

WHY PROSPECTIVE MOTHERS SHOULD BE TAUGHT HOW TO 
HAVE EASY LABORS. 
All too frequently the bread-winner shows his displeasure 
and impatience at his hard luck. He cannot see why his wife 
has to make so much more expense than other women. The sick 
woman cannot understand why she gets along so badly when 
some of her friends had no trouble at all. Doctors come in for 
a lot of blame, and, many times, not unjustly, for they have a 
penchant for using instruments and otherwise expediting labor. In 
this hurry-up and impatience they are encouraged by the woman, 
who wants to be relieved of her suffering as soon as possible, and 



44 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

the consequence is that a labor that should be retarded for thirty- 
six to forty-eight hours is precipitated in from six to eight hours. 
This hurry invites, and indeed causes, bruising and laceration, the 
end of which, and what it will be, no one is wise enough to guess. 
Death from septicemia is a possible contingent; but if the end- 
ing is not so tragic, there may be damage to health for life. At 
the very least, sufficient damage is done to require the finest 
medical skill to right it in a reasonable time. It can be safely 
predicted that the class of skill that brought the woman into her 
trouble cannot get her out of it. 

Such confinements must be handled with great care, to avoid 
lacerations, and there is a small per cent that even the most con- 
summate obstetric skill will fail to protect, unless the physician 
is employed at the beginning of pregnancy and can have the nine 
months in which to prepare the patient for her labor. 

The cause of all this trouble is, as I have related in the 
previous articles on diseases of women, wrong life, leading to 
enervation, faulty elimination and hardening of the uterine tissues 
from chronic inflammation. 

Our sins will find us out. Nothing is truer than that, if 
girls and young women persist in abusing their health, when they 
come to be mothers they will certainly pay for their errors with 
disease in their own bodies as well as in the bodies of their chil- 
dren. It is again true that the sins of the parents are visited on 
the children — not so much as an inheritance as from the daily 
practice, by the family, of bad habits. The mother who will not 
control herself cannot control her children, and she must suffer from 
cross, irritable and abnormally sensitive babies. Nervous irritation 
in mothers is reflected and shows itself in cross, irritable children. 



WHY WOMEN SUFFER. 45 

Much is said about normal labors, and that civilized women 
suffer more than their aboriginal sisters'. Why not? The body 
cannot be abused with impunity. Civilized people eat too much 
and eat improperly; they clothe their bodies too much and un- 
wisely; cultivate their emotional natures out of all reason by 
overindulgence in physical and mental stimulation and neglect of 
exercise; all of which prematurely ages the body by hardening 
the tissues, and brings on disease; which, in truth, is a conserva- 
tive measure and tends to overcome premature senility. 

Men in the clutches of the degenerating habits of civilized 
life become inefficient at forty years of age; only a small per 
cent enjoy mental maturity. They frequently make no advance 
after twenty-five to thirty-five years of age; their wits go wool- 
gathering, so that they fail to see and embrace their opportunities. 
Instead of ripening, their minds come to a quick maturity, char- 
acterized by an irritable fanaticism which is spent in finding fault 
with life in general. Our social condition is that of turmoil, set 
in motion and kept active by the irritability of mental impotency. 
This is the price men pay for the habits that bring the mis- 
fortunes I am portraying to their wives. Do bad habits pay? 

Disease, both physical and mental, is the rule among men 
and women. The impotency that is consciously felt by the 
masses, but not understood, takes form in more or less race-sui- 
cide. Impotency, not being a desirable biologic projection, na- 
ture everywhere strives to suppress it. In our present social state 
we see everywhere a determined effort to limit or suppress pro- 
creation. 



46 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

HOW TO KEEP FROM HAVING CHILDREN. 

One of the most important questions to be settled after 
marriage is how to keep from having children. Efforts in this 
line add to pre-existing physical derangements, so that the chronic 
irritation, inflammation and hardening of the neck of the womb 
already existing at marriage are further developed by frustrating 
the natural consequences of married life. When this is practiced 
for a few years, if sterility is not fully established, the normal 
elasticity of the uterus is so completely overcome that pregnancy 
will be accompanied with many disagreeable symptoms, and 
labor will be so hard, and the injuries so great, that a more 
strenuous effort will be made to prevent any more children being 
born. 

Those who pay such penalties for living an abnormal life 
do not know that the fault is their own and that it is remediable* 
The average physician knows about as? little as his patients, and 
when it comes to the question of having more children, the women 
declare they will not, and many are really afraid that a repeti- 
tion would end their lives. In this belief they are encouraged by 
the doctor. Many such cases come to me for treatment and tell 
me that their physicians have declared that they have pelvic de- 
formities and that they cannot give birth to living children, and 
that they (the mothers) cannot survive a second confinement. 
On examination I find not a word of truth in the statement. 
Pelvic deformities of sufficient magnitude to make childbirth in- 
advisable are very rare in the United States, but a large per cent 
of doctors are so innocent of any independent knowledge of what 
commonly causes unnecessary suffering in childbirth that they are 
thrown back on their college teachings about contracted and de- 



WASTE OF LIFE. 47 

formed pelvises, and they naturally suppose every severe labor 
must come from deformity. Consequently, abortion is recom- 
mended and put in practice. 

CONSEQUENCES OF ABORTION. 

Abortion is quite common, and its consequences are to be 
seen everywhere. Every time this outrage is committed, a little 
more is added to the existing disease. Menstruation, sex stimula- 
tion and abortion bring about a continual state of excitement, 
which keeps the reproductive organs in a state of congestion — en- 
gorgement. Add to this the shocks common to the use of all 
sorts of alleged preventives?, and no one should be surprised at the 
amount of sickness common to women. 

Waste of life is appallingly needless and is brought on with 
a carelessness worthy of fools. 

The thickened and indurated walls and misplacements that 
always exist under these circumstances interfere with the circula- 
tion. The compressed parts have their supply of blood partially 
cut off, while the other parts are in a state of hyperemia; the 
veins fail to carry the blood away as fast as the arteries carry 
it in, and this results in an accumulation not only of blood, but 
of waste products. The elimination is greatly retarded; the tis- 
sues are poisoned; the lymphatics become diseased and take on 
enlargement. From this beginning, fibroid tumors are developed. 

Treatment: The treatment for endometritis (inflammation 
of the mucous membrane of the inside of the womb) and endo- 
cervicitis (inflammation of the mucous membrane of the neck of 
the womb) must be constitutional as well as local. After child- 
birth the body of the womb is left enlarged, but the muscular 
structure of the neck is usually involved even before pregnancy 



48 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

adds to its induration. Proof of this can be had by examining 
the neck of the womb before pregnancy, when it will be found 
hard and sensitive to touch, and an ocular examination will reveal 
the mouth red and granulated. After childbirth, as stated above, 
the body becomes involved in the enlargement because of a failure 
in the process of involution — the womb fails to return to its normal 
size. This enlargement complicates the disease by adding size and 
weight, which favors displacements. To overcome the enlargement 
should be one of the first objects of treatment. 

The patient must be taught how to place herself in the 
knee-shoulder position. This position must be assumed every 
three hours daily, and it should be retained for ten or fifteen 
minutes each time. After getting into bed at night, this position 
should be assumed, and after the pelvic organs have gravitated 
into the abdomen, the patient can lie down on the right side, with 
the right arm behind and the left leg flexed, to prevent her from 
rolling over on her face. This is the best position for sleeping. 
These patients are to take as much exercise, lying on the back, 
as possible. Until almost well, no set exercise should be taken 
while standing. Walks in the open air twice a day, followed 
by ten minutes in the knee-shoulder position to overcome the 
gravitation of the pelvic organs caused by walking, must be 
taken without fail. 

The eating should be very light — light enough to allow a 
gradual dropping of the bodily weight. If this is carried out, it 
will reduce the downward pressure in the abdomen from gas or 
fat, or both, and this will allow the pelvic organs to resume their 
normal position. 



OBJECT OF FASTING. 49 

WHAT FASTING DOES. 

Fasting, or eating very little, encourages absorption of pelvic 
enlargements; and it must be understood that these diseases can- 
not be overcome so long as the patient is determined to eat all 
she can or all she desires. So long as the abdomen is filled with 
fat or gas, there cannot be improvement. 

No two cases require the same feeding; hence, I shall not 
suggest any set diet, but if the patient would get well rapidly 
she must fast or eat very little. 

The object of fasting is to stimulate absorption. It should 
be known that so long as the body is kept busy with the food 
intake, it cannot rid itself of the effects of its previous oversupply. 
Less food than is required to maintain a normal physiological 
equilibrium must be given in all cases where it is necessary to 
get rid of inflammatory deposits, and any curative system that 
proceeds on any other line will fail to cure. 

Potatoes should be eliminated from the diet entirely, and 
bread and meat should not be eaten oftener than once a day. 
Fruit and vegetable salads should be eaten more freely than any 
other foods. 

In severe cases, with an aggravated state of both local and 
general symptoms, a fast of a few days to a week is a good 
thing with which to start the treatment. 

Local treatment: A half-gallon hot-water douche may be 
used twice a day until better; then only once a day. The neck 
of the womb should be relieved of its engorgement by scarifying 
and drawing blood with a pump made for the purpose. This 
blood-letting can be practiced two or three times a week. I do 
not recommend local applications of drugs and chemicals, for 



50 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

drugs cannot be of benefit. The cure must come through cor- 
recting the habits of life by proper feeding, and the care of body 
and mind generally. 

When these patients can exercise without causing further 
displacement, they should work hard at physical exercise. When 
exercise is not admissible, deep breathing should be practiced two 
or three times a day in the open air. 

CURETTING CAN'T DO MUCH. 

Curetting is commonly recommended and practiced, and 
several years ago I resorted to this operation as a cure; but I 
have given it up. Relief follows the operation, but it is of short 
duration. The symptoms quickly return, and why not? Simply 
removing the granulations (which is what curetting does) in no 
way removes the cause. Where the internal opening of the neck 
is too close to allow the secretions to pass out readily, dilation 
gives relief; but relief from this operation is of short duration^ 
unless the general treatment for overcoming the catarrhal inflam- 
mation has been successful. 

In those cases where the mouth of the womb has been 
lacerated, the operation of hysterocleisis (closure of the os uteri 
by scarifying and suturing) is generally urged, but patients are 
often left with a more painful disease than they had before, be- 
cause closing the mouth of the womb before the inflammation in 
it has been controlled will prove a mechanical obstruction to the 
discharge, and when the catarrhal discharge cannot pass out 
readily, its accumulation causes pain. 

When the inflammation is overcome, the enlargement sub- 
sides, leaving a very insignificant nick where before there ap- 
peared to be a very large, ugly-looking wound. 



INFECTION FOLLOWING CHILDBIRTH. 51 

When there is much enlargement and the laceration looks 
deep and wide, it is well to remember that its formidable appear- 
ance will be reduced in the same proportion as the mouth and 
neck will be reduced when all the abnormal thickening is removed ; 
in other words, if the neck and mouth or lips are four times their 
normal thickness, the laceration will also be four times what it 
will be when the enlargement is reduced. By making this cal- 
culation, the mind will be relieved of the belief that an operation 
to close the wound is urgent. The truth is, if an operation is 
really thought to be needed, it should not be done until after 
the parts are reduced to normal size — after the disease is cured; 
then only the surgical maniac will believe an operation is neces- 
sary. 

Above is given the treatment for chronic cases; I will now 
give treatment for the acute complications. 

Complications. Septic or specific infection causing general 
or local inflammation. 

After lacerations, if septic infection causes lymphangitis, 
phlebitis, cellulitis or peritonitis, they must be treated through 
their acute stages according to their special needs. These four 
diseases are different forms of the same disease. It is rare when 
septic infection is confined to the lymph glands, if it ever is; for 
the blood vessels must be involved, and the cellular tissues can- 
not escape; besides, an infection must be very light and restricted 
not to involve a small portion of the peritoneum, or, at least, that 
part covering the womb, tubes and ovaries. 

It is well to think of infection following childbirth as septic 
infection, or even peritonitis, and treat every case with the same 
care and attention that would be given to a real childbed fever; 



52 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

for, indeed, a little carelessness, mismanagement or bungling 
treatment may convert a slight infection into a general and fatal 
type. 

CLEANLINESS IS MOST IMPORTANT. 

Treatment: After childbirth or abortion, cleanliness is the 
most important therapeutic measure. If the temperature increases 
soon after either, and pain and tenderness? are complained of, it 
is pretty certain that there is retention of debris, and cleanliness 
has been neglected before or during the time of labor. No time 
should be lost in attempting to correct the neglect. 

If, after childbirth, the temperature rises, and pain or ten- 
derness starts up in the womb, intra-uterine douches must be 
resorted to at once; if the symptoms 1 are pronounced, the douches 
must be given every three hours. Boiled water is all that is 
necessary, and two quarts should be used at each douche; how- 
ever, if two quarts are not sufficient to clear out the debris, four 
or more quarts may be used. The douching must be to the ex- 
tent of reducing and keeping reduced the bodily temperature. 
The temperature must be the guide ; the intra-uterine douches must 
be given as often and as large as necessary to keep the pulse and 
temperature down. After a day or two, if the temperature shows 
no inclination to return, the douches need not be given more than 
once or twice a day. Positively no food is to be given until the 
symptoms show that the disease is entirely controlled. 

Abortion must be treated the same way. It is common to 
curet, but if infection is going on "without doubt, to curet will 
probably cause death, for even if the instrument is dull, it is very 
liable to open new avenues for fresh absorption of septic material, 
and I have found that it is better to trust nature, aided by efficient 



WHAT CAN DRUGS DO? 53 

douches, to throw off the offending material than to tear down na- 
ture's barriers by blindly overworking even a blunt curet. 

Of course, the uterus should be emptied if it can be done be- 
fore infection has taken place, but to do so after septic absorption 
has begun is malpractice of the worst sort. 

Infection has not always taken place in cases where there 
is pain and an increase in temperature, and these are the cases 
that appear to refute my plan of treatment. 

Copious douches encourage the loosening up and expulsion 
of debris, and, at least, the septic fluids and gases will be washed 
away, and the cases will usually end with no worse results than 
a localized inflammation with abscess?. 

Is this all the treatment I give? What more is necessary 
to be given, except to prescribe heat to feet, fresh air and perfect 
quiet? What can drugs do? Nothing, except to reduce the 
vitality. It must not be forgotten that nature is busy, and all 
she needs is a little sane assistance in expelling retained material. 
If help in the line of clearing out the womb be of a rough 
character, nature's? defenses will be broken down, and the result 
can be, and often is, death. 

Specific or Gonorrheal Infection will not involve more than 
the first part of the urethra and vagina, unless it is forced by 
bungling medical treatment into the bladder or womb. Physi- 
cians who must do something, get busy with examinations and 
so-called instrumental treatment, and force the infection from the 
front portion of the urethra into the bladder, and from the vagina 
into the womb; and from there it appears that the disease is able 
to extend to the tubes and ovaries without assistance; however, 



54 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

assistance is altogether too common by way of professional officious- 
ness. 

When the disease is simple and has not been forced beyond 
the limits set by nature, it is an easy disease to get rid of. 

Treatment: The patient must keep quiet. Take a glass 
or two of milk three times a day, and use vaginal douches of pure 
hot water three times a day, having the water as hot as can be 
borne. Even in those cases suffering severely from chronic in- 
flammation of the neck of the womb, the disease is not liable to 
infect these parts unless a medical bungler forces infection by 
gathering the virus on his instruments and dressings, and rubbing 
it into the granular surfaces. These surfaces are protected by a 
thick, tenacious, catarrhal secretion. Of course, no doctor will 
do such a thing knowingly, but it is done ignorantly, and ignor- 
ance should not be an acceptable apology. 

In those cases where the infection has entered either the 
bladder or the uterine cavity, the treatment must be a simple diet 
and cleansing douches in the bladder and uterus, with correct care 
of the body in every way. Operations for the removal of the 
ovaries, tubes and even the womb are constantly practiced because 
of the extention of this disease, but with indifferent success; after 
much experience I recommend a conservative and waiting plan. It 
is better to bear the ills we have than to be too eager to fly to those 
we know not of. Nature can be relied upon to respond to kind 
and sane treatment. Nature heroically resents heroic treatment; 
that is why death so frequently results from the profession's 
lightning-like activity. 



SALPINGITIS. 55 

PHLEBITIS OR MILKLEG. 

Inflammation of the veins affecting one or both limbs, follow- 
ing childbirth, is the same disease that we have to contend with 
when combating infective inflammation of the pelvic or abdominal 
viscera. Location and the different structural tissue formation is all 
the difference. The nature of the disease and source of infection 
are the same and require the same treatment. 

Treatment: Douche the womb and get rid of the septic 
infection, and at the same time local treatment to the limb can 
be applied. Use hot applications to relieve the pain; but the 
cause in the womb must be gone after vigorously. 

r£* rfi rf, 

Cellulitis and Lymphangitis are distinctions that need not 
be seriously considered, because the treatment for either is the 
same. 

Treatment: Get rid of the intra-uterine cause of septic in- 
fection in the same way recommended for the other diseases. 

Salpingitis (inflammation of the tubes). — This and ovaritis 
receive their infection from the same cause, and the 

Treatment must be the same. 

Abscesses. — When abscesses form as the result of any of 
these local inflammations, the pus must be drained out through 
the vagina, the natural outlet. 

If the treatment has been correct up to this point, nature 
will relieve herself, or point to her wish in the matter. 

If I should allow myself to be held strictly to describing 
the two diseases that head this? article, I could not digress to the 
extent of bringing in all the varieties of diseases caused by in- 



56 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

fection; but inasmuch as endo-metritis and -cervicitis take their 
origin anterior and subsequent to these acute diseases, I could not 
give all the causes that enter into the evolving of typical cases 
without doing so, and if I succeed in showing the reader the 
unity of all diseases — showing that there is no such thing as an 
independent disease — I shall not feel that an apology is necessary 
for interpolating, so to speak, infection and its? chain of supposed- 
to-be independent diseases. 

I hope I have made it plain to the reader how that, in the 
first place, wrong life causes general systemic derangement, which 
makes it possible to develop local catarrhal inflammations ; and then 
how these local diseases produce morbid tissues which, when in- 
jured, take on a more serious form of inflammation than they 
otherwise would; and how, after all this involving and evolving, 
we can have a typical case of chronic inflammation and ulceration 
of the womb. 

I have referred to the diseases caused by septic infection, 
and now I shall simply allude to the adhesions which frequently 
take place and cause much annoyance in future life. 

Adhesions. — Septic inflammation frequently ends in causing 
an anteverted uterus to adhere to the bladder, and a retroverted 
uterus to adhere to the rectum. Occasionally a retroverted uterus 
is tied in a conglomerate mass of adhesions to the rectum and left 
ovary; in extreme cases of this nature, patients suffer greatly, 
and unless they are willing to live very carefully, there is little 
hope of relief except by surgery; and even this may fail to give 
complete relief after the radical operation of removing all the 
reproductive organs. Why? Because it is almost impossible to 



WRONG LIFE. 57 

prevent gravitation of the bladder, rectum or intestines into the 
wound, where they will adhere. 

It has been my experience, however, that if a woman who 
has been unfortunate enough to get into this state will live strictly 
a prudent life, she can have quite a comfortable existence. 

Wrong life continued after adhesions have formed will force 
further degeneration. The ovaries take on cystic disease, and 
quite large ovarian tumors are known to develop very rapidly. 
One of the commonest diseases' to develop at almost any stage 
of uterine disease is fibroid tumors. 

PEOPLE CAN HELP THEMSELVES. 

Lay readers who need help because of any of these dis- 
eases can, after reading this, be of great help to their physicians 
in conducting a successful treatment. At least, my readers should 
be intelligent enough to know that much depends upon the care 
they give themselves. In such diseases, prudence in the care of 
the body, and a willingness to rely on the important element of 
time, enter very largely into a successful treatment. Unwillingness 
to let well enough alone sends many to a premature death. 

Were I a woman, and so unfortunate as to develop chronic 
pelvic disease, knowing what I do, I should rather trust nature, 
aided by prudence on my part, than to have the skill of a dozen 
of the best surgeons in the world; for surgeons have no power to 
give health, and their operations are oftener in the line of obstruct- 
ing nature, and dissipating needed vital energy, than in the line 
of removing causes. 



CHAPTER V. 



Pelvic Suppuration — Abscess. 




jNFLAMMATION often ends in abscess. In the pre- 
vious chapter pelvic inflammations and their treatment 
were gone over; suppuration or abscesses frequently 
follow the diseases described in that chapter. When 
women have a normal resistance — when they are not 
greatly autotoxemic — inflammations caused by injuries 
at childbirth are confined to small areas, and end quickly and nor- 
mally; but a considerable percentage end in suppuration, or the 
formation of abscesses. 

The local inflammation may subside, and be re-ignited, so 
to speak, by unclean surgical manipulations, such as soundings, 
curettage, or other rough, unskilled handling. 

All patients who have had local inflammation are liable 
to a recurrence if subjected to certain kinds of local treatment. 
To cauterize the womb for ulceration, which is a common prac- 
tice, notwithstanding its doubtful utility, is liable to light up a 
fresh inflammation in the site of an old. This is especially true 
if the previous disease was gonorrheal inflammation. 

This accident is liable to take place in the practice of the 
most skilled physicians, and when it does, the price the patient 
will pay will be a long sickness, a surgical operation, or death; 
perhaps all combined. 



DIFFICULTY IN DIAGNOSING. 59 

The patient in whom this accident is liable to occur is in 
an unfavorable physical state, and liable to take on inflammation 
from the slightest provocation; surgical operations to relieve too 
often become the exciting cause of a destructive — life-destroying — 
inflammation. 

FALLOPIAN ABSCESS. 

A latent case of inflammation and suppuration in both fal- 
lopian tubes came under my observation a few years ago. The 
physician in charge of the case told me that he had curetted for 
the purpose of overcoming excessive menstruation, and as the 
patient gave a history of uninterrupted health for twenty years, 
he operated unhesitatingly. No improvement followed the curet- 
tage, but, instead, there developed uncomfortable pelvic symp- 
toms, with a sub-acute inflammation; the temperature did not go 
above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The patient being quite stout, 
with a thick abdominal wall, I had some difficulty in locating 
the disease; but when I did, and told the physician that his 
patient had pyosalpinx — pus in the tubes — he did not hesitate 
to express his doubt of the correctness of my diagnosis; for, said 
he, "there is no history of pelvic disease, and the curetment was 
performed with care, and a dull curet, and I am sure I did no 
damage." I gave as my opinion that the curetment had caused 
inflammation to start up in the site of an old inflammation, and 
that the disease was originally gonorrhea. This I proved to be 
true by securing the husband's acknowledgment of having in- 
fected his wife twenty years before; but, he declared, "she fully 
and quickly recovered from that disease." Neither the doctor 
nor the patient's husband believed that the infection of twenty 
years before had anything to do with the present disease, there- 



60 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

fore doubted my diagnosis. Other surgeons and consultants were 
called, which resulted in an operation three days later, and both 
tubes were removed. The doctor informed me after the opera- 
tion that both the tubes were enlarged to half the size of his 
wrist, and filled with pus. 

The unfortunate woman died three or four hours after 
the operation, which agreed with the prognosis I had made at 
the time I was in consultation. I opposed an operation for sev- 
eral reasons: First, with proper nursing and care, the patient 
was in no danger of dying. Second, her chances for recovery 
by an operation were almost, if not quite, nil. Why? Be- 
cause she was too stout, and her heart was weak. Those who 
weigh above normal, and who are pronouncedly autotoxemic, 
take on inflammation easily. Third, those who have had gon- 
orrheal inflammation of the tubes and ovaries are left so vul- 
nerable that a second inflammation is easily started up; ordinary 
manipulations in the line of treatment, and surgical operations, 
are resented, as it were, by the body, and the death of the pa- 
tient is often the only reward the doctor has for his pains. 

The perversions, or scar tissue, left by septic inflamma- 
tions, are as vulnerable as those left by gonorrhea; indeed, these 
secondary inflammations act much the same, whatever the differ- 
ence contended for, concerning the character of the primary in- 
fections. 

If this case had been left without operation, what would 
have taken place? The woman had been sterile for twenty 
years, due probably to the closing of the openings of the tubes 
into the womb. If she had been left alone, possibly the pus 
would have forced its way through these closed openings, this 
being the natural route for it to take; if not, it might have found 



SURGICAL INTERFERENCE. 61 

exit through the rectum or vagina, when the resistance to the 
normal route could not be overcome. 

The careful physician will watch and give whatever assist- 
ance is necessary in such cases, but it should not be forgotten 
that death of the patient is the price for hasty, ill-considered med- 
ical and surgical interference. 

THE DANGER IN ABSCESS. 

It is doubtful if any form of pelvic abscess will end in 
death if left entirely alone. The danger in all abdominal and 
pelvic abscesses is medical and surgical interference. Rough 
examinations complicate by breaking the pus sac and forcing an 
extension of the disease into territory that nature has protected 
by walls of adhesions. Operations following such examina- 
tions always show how very "necessary the operations were;'* but 
if the surgeon's fingers had not been forced through the abscess 
walls, rupture would not have taken place. If left alone and 
not interfered with, in due time the pus would have found a 
safe exit. 

Those who have been reading my writings for several years 
should be quite familiar with my attitude toward surgical inter- 
ference in abdominal and pelvic abscesses. I object to appen- 
dectomy, because, in the first place, the operation is unsurgical, 
and, in the next place, it is unnecessary, even if it did not out- 
rage one of the most important surgical principles known, namely: 
"Always open an abscess at a point where drainage will be per- 
fect." To open the abdomen for the purpose of treating an 
abscess is inviting trouble. Why? If drainage is necessary after 
such operations (and it is always necessary where pus has 



62 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

formed), it must be secured at the great disadvantage of being 
in opposition to gravitation. 

Appendicular, ovarian, tubal and cellular abscesses tend to 
open in the line of least resistance, and gravitation. All cases 
of appendicular abscess will open into the intestine, if not com- 
plicated by medical officiousness and improper nursing. The 
pelvic abscesses will empty through the womb, vagina or rectum, 
if permitted; but when roughly handled — when subjected to 
many scientific bimanual examinations — the pus may find its way 
through the bladder, or be ruptured into the peritoneal cavity, 
which accident will be followed by death, unless a hasty opera- 
tion happens to save the patient's life. 

There are a great variety of names given to the abscesses 
of the pelvis, derived from their location. 

The general symptoms are fever, chills, rapid pulse, pain, 
leucorrhea, swelling and fluctuation on bimanual palpation; in 
some cases, great restlessness. 

Fever is not always present. Chills, followed by fever and 
sweating, announce pus formation. Pressure on bladder and rec- 
tum is a common symptom. 

Treatment ; Rest is the most important remedy. The less 
food taken the better; hot vaginal douches should be given every 
day; enemas to keep the lower bowel empty. 

When examinations are made, they should be as gentle as 
possible; instrumental examinations are liable to do harm. 

It is better to be six months or a year getting well than to 
get in such a hurry as to invite a funeral. Impatience of doc- 
tors and patients often brings about the death of the latter. When 
death is not the outcome of hysterical impatience and professional 



CONTENTMENT. 63 

officiousness, life-long invalidism has been known to follow, and 
is always a possible contingent. 

CULTIVATE PATIENCE. 

Not many people will choose a plan of treatment that prom- 
ises more chances for a fatality or chronic invalidism than a 
cure, if they know it, and to all such I will say: Cultivate pa- 
tience to endure your ills, and a willingness to make whatever 
personal sacrifices are necessary in giving up sense-pleasures until 
health is restored. Your lives need not be empty; embrace the 
opportunity of cultivating self-discipline. Every such misfortune 
can be turned into a blessing, if handled right. Those who suf- 
fer such pain bring it on by indulging the appetites; those who 
suffer mentally from the restraint forced by disease need to cul- 
tivate poise. By cultivating contentment and resignation, the 
cure is hastened, and a power over self is gained that will be 
of benefit when health is restored. Remember that doctors can 
do very little except give good advice, unless they are forced, by 
your unreasonable solicitation for relief, to do you harm by giv- 
ing you drugs to control a pain that your impatience and impru- 
dence have built, or give you a questionable operation. 

Eating imprudently and for pleasure will build much dis- 
comfort, by causing indigestion, which fills the bowels with gas, 
and the gas pressure causes nervousness and pain. Eating more 
than necessary increases arterial tension; this is followed by nerv- 
ousness and pain. Pain belongs to irritability and impatience. 
Poise is the best single remedy for controlling all pain. Irri- 
tability and impatience ruin digestion and blood-making. 

All disagreeable symptoms can be got rid of by fasting and 
mental self-control. After comfort has been secured, then eat 



64 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

sufficiently light to maintain comfort. Those who are pampered 
and have no self-control get the worst of sickness. 

When pus points, it should be let out, and drainage put in. 

When women decide that it is better to sacrifice a portion of 
their bodies to the Surgical Moloch, than to adopt a style of life 
that requires much self-control to insure health, they are in line 
for the boneyard. 

UTERINE POLYPI. 

Small growths, called polypi, either mucous or fibroid, de- 
velop in the womb and neck of the womb. They cause leu- 
corrhea and hemorrhage. 

When the menstruation is too profuse, and there is a marked 
leucorrhea, the cause may be due to these small growths. 

Treatment: When long enough to protrude from the 
mouth of the womb, they can be twisted or cut away. When 
developed to the size of an egg, they cause more or less bearing- 
down pain, and profuse hemorrhage. They are easy of removal, 
and should be removed by the family physician before the pa- 
tient is informed of their presence; for when a patient has lost 
enough blood to cause anemia and nervousness, the knowledge 
that a tumor is causing the trouble creates much worry, even ;f 
the physician assures the patient that it can be removed without 
pain. Remember that worry kills by overcoming resistance and 
ruining blood-making. 

I am sorry to say that there are physicians who make a 
great deal of these growths by telling their patients that they 
must go to the hospital for operations. This statement creates 
needless fear. One such case comes to mind: A gentleman 
living in a town forty miles from Denver brought his wife to me 



FEAR. 65 

for examination and opinion. I found her extremely nervous; 
pulse 120, and complaining of pain in the pelvis, and leucorrhea. 
Speculum examination revealed a small mucous fibroid projecting 
from the mouth of the womb. Without a suggestion of my dis- 
covery, I applied forceps, and gently twisted it off. When I 
had finished the treatment, I said to the patient: "This small 
tumor which I have removed has probably caused most of your 
nervousness. You will now be all right." Whereupon she hys- 
terically replied: "Tumor! You have removed a tumor from 
me?" And, looking at her husband, with tears and sobs she 
cried: "Why didn't our own doctor take it away and save 
me all this dreadful worry I have been going through for a 
week?" Then the husband told me that his wife had been or- 
dered to go to the hospital to have a tumor removed, but that 
they had decided to consult me first. 

The woman was sick from worry, and when she found 
that there was really no excuse for all the mental torture she 
had gone through, the good opinion which she had entertained 
of her physician took a sudden slump. Why the doctor made 
so much of so insignificant a growth I can't imagine. 

Fear is very enervating, and must be avoided when possible. 
This woman's high pulse and nervousness came from her worry 
caused by the fear of an operation, all of which was as need- 
less as her tumor was insignificant. 

When there is no fear, there is but little pain accompany- 
ing even major operations. 



CHAPTER VI. 



Fibroid Tumor. 




RRITATION builds tumors. There are three 
varieties of fibroid tumors: the submucous, in- 
terstitial, and subperitoneal The submucous 
fibroid develops inside of the womb. This 
variety causes hemorrhage, and when located 
close to the neck, it causes uterine contractions. 
These contractions are described as bearing-down pains. In the 
course of time these tumors are forced out of the womb, and, like 
the polypus, can be removed without trouble. When the tumor is 
located close to the fundus, it may develop to the size of a large 
orange, and create no trouble farther than more or less hemorrhage 
— profuse menstruation. 

The interstitial variety develops within the walls of the 
womb, but when it attains any size, its development will be more 
to the outside. In its early development it may cause hemorrhage, 
but it is not so much inclined to do so as the first variety. 

The subperitoneal fibroid tumor develops on the outside of 
the womb, under the peritoneal covering of the womb. This 
variety attains the greatest size, because it is not restrained by 
pressure, nor relieved by menorrhagia; it may develop to so 
great a size that it will cause discomfort from its weight, and 
pressure on the bowels and bladder. 



THE UTERUS A SEX-ORGAN. 67 

Etiology: The cause of fibroid tumor of the uterus is not 
single; indeed, the causes are numerous — multiple. Cause, so 
far as any disease is concerned, is multiple; but fibroids, in any 
part of the body, have as cause a veritable Hydra. 

Most authors declare that the disease is more common in 
unmarried and nulliparous women. This has not proven true 
in my experience, yet I can see why it may be true as a general 
rule. 

The uterus is a sex-organ, and is influenced by the mind as 
well as the body. 

At puberty there is a greatly increased flow of blood to 
the pelvis, especially the sex-organs, If the eating and care of 
the body are overstimulatin? ; if the food tends to excite the sex- 
nature, and the mind is fed by lewd fiction, moving-picture shows 
of the dime-novel order, impure companionship, the pelvic organs 
will take on an intense state of irritability, with periodic con- 
gestions that will be marked by painful menstruation, excessive 
flow, even hemorrhage of a fearful nature, may occur. 

Those who flow excessively during the menstrual period are 
not so liable to grow large fibroids as those whose menstruation 
is not very materially increased in quantity. 

THE MEANING OF EXCESSIVE FLOWING. 
Those who flow excessively look upon the excess flow as 
the real disease. They believe that if they could have the hem- 
orrhage controlled they would be well, or have little to worry 
about. This is true from one point of view. A treatment that 
inhibits all the influences causing pelvic congestion will undoubt- 
edly bring the menorrhagia (excessive flow) to an end, and 



68 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

not only end the engorged state of the pelvic organs, but bring 
about complete control of the growth of the tumor. 

Young women whose moral training has been to avoid every 
act that convention would censure — never to do anything that 
could be criticised by the most prudent — but who have been left 
to the ravages of lascivious imaginings, suffer greatly from pelvic 
congestion. 

Too many young women, as well as young men, believe that 
if they avoid overt acts of sexual immorality, a sensual mind can 
do no harm, and not be detected. The general moral education 
on the subject of sexuality amounts to the belief that if the sexes 
do not mix physically or mentally, they may debauch themselves 
agreeable to their inclinations, and they cannot be held respon- 
sible to God or man for these covert acts. But alas! The 
laws of health are no respecters of persons. They place 
the stamp of disapproval on the debauched mind as well as on 
the debauched body. 

It is not generally known, but should be, that some of the 
worst sexually debauched young men and young women we have 
are among those who have not committed an imprudence or broken 
a conventional rule in a sexual way, that could bring a rebuke 
or criticism from a prude, yet physically and mentally they show 
a greater moral and physical deterioration than many who be- 
lieve in and practice libertinism. Rewards and punishments com- 
ing from nature are impersonal and unmoral. The person who 
believes that a life spent in contemplating his navel is the best 
way to prove to the powers that be that his greatest desire is 
to serve his Master, may surfer in many ways because of break- 
ing the laws of health, while another may repudiate every recog- 
nized moral law, and live wholly to gratify his sense-desires, yet 



MORALITY. 69 

he may live longer and enjoy better health than the consecrated 
man. 

Morality is too often a set formula, with nature's require- 
ments left out. To illustrate: A pious man may spend so much 
time in dark, dank churches that he contracts tuberculosis; he 
then may renounce his piety, and leave the church for the open 
air; fish, hunt, and profane the Sabbath in all sorts of desecra- 
tions, and recover his health. An impure mind without an overt 
act ruins health. A normal mind with an unrestrained body means 
fully rounded-out health. Why? Because normal minds, do not 
run to excess. 

Self-consecration and acts that are contrary to natural order 
will bring punishment, in spite of the fact that they are fully ap- 
proved by moral censors. 

Onanism means physical and mental self-pollution. When 
this state exists, all organs belonging to the sex-function are kept 
in a state of congestion. Too much blood in a part causes en- 
largement, and when the enlargement continues for a long time 
new growth takes place — fibroid enlargement takes place. 

It should not be forgotten that in all pronounced cases ot 
functional derangement there must be the basal derangement, 
namely, autotoxemia; this systemic derangement furnishes a most 
excellent soil on which to grow fibroid tumors. 

These tumors are of slow growth. Excessive eating, with 
much emotional excitement, and lascivious thoughts, are the ex- 
citing causes. When the flow is quite heavy each month, the 
tumor will grow very slowly. When the tumor is situated on the 
exterior of the uterus, or when it does not give rise to flowing, it 
will often grow very rapidly. 



70 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

Symptoms: Hemorrhage — not always present, as I have 
stated above; heaviness in lower bowels; pain; irritation of the 
bladder and rectum; leucorrhea. These growths may interfere 
with childbirth, and they may cause constipation by pressure on 
the rectum. 

Treatment: The usual prescription is rest during the men- 
strual period. Abdominal bandages are recommended; and pain 
is controlled by opium and belladonna suppositories and hot bags. 
Ergot and cotton-root extracts are given to check the flow. 

When these remedies fail, which they ivill in every case, 
then extirpation of the tumor, or of the uterus plus the tumor, is 
the last resort. 

The above is, in a nutshell, the treatment recommended by 
the "regular" school of medicine. 

Almost daily it falls to my lot to pass upon the need of 
prescribed operations for fibroid tumors. In the majority of cases 
the most pronounced symptoms are those of indigestion and the 
consequent malnutrition; of course, there is in all cases the ever 
present autotoxemia. Every disagreeable sensation is too often 
attributed by the doctor to the tumor, and then when the patient 
is frightened about an operation, all her symptoms are exag- 
gerated; this change is taken advantage of by some doctors to 
prove that her symptoms are all growing worse, and will con- 
tinue to do so until she is operated upon. Such remarks as, "You 
should be operated upon before it is too late," are not conducive 
to mental composure. 

Am I exaggerating? I have been denounced by eminent 
surgeons for laboring to save patients whom they had either knav- 
ishly or ignorantly scared almost to death by urging them to sub- 
mit to an operation. 



HEMORRHAGE. 71 

Reader, what sort of an influence would such a statement 
as, "If you do not submit to an operation at once, you will not 
live to see the snow fly," have on you, if you had implicit faith 
in the doctor who tells you this on his professional honor? 

There is but one symptom that gives the least justification 
for recommending surgery, and that one is hemorrhage; and when 
a doctor finds that hemorrhage is one of nature's conservative 
measures, he will then know that if the flow could be controlled, 
on the order of astringing or ligating the mouths of the blood- 
vessels, the disease would be made worse — the tumor would grow 
faster; he should know that a cure does not consist of removing 
a bleeding or growing organ, but of removing the causes which 
bring about the abnormal activity of the parts. When the womb 
is removed along with the tumor, is the disease cured? How 
can the removing of an effect (that is what a tumor is) cure a 
cause ? 

If hemorrhage is a conservative measure — a safety valve, 
so to speak — it should not be interfered with, except to remove 
its cause; and when the cause of the hemorrhage is removed, the 
cause of fibroid tumors is also removed; after which there isn't 
anything left for nature to do but to absorb the tumor, which she 
will do in a reasonable time. 

HEMORRHAGE DOES NOT ALWAYS COME FROM FIBROID TUMOR. 
Hemorrhage does not always come from fibroid tumors; 
cancer of the neck of the womb is frequently accompanied by 
very profuse hemorrhage. Both these diseases have nearly the 
same origin. The cancer usually locates in the site of an injury 
— in the site of a tear received at childbirth — while fibroids spring 
up in any part of the uterus that fortuitously carries the greatest 



72 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

amount of blood. Both these diseases must have autotoxemia as 
a basal cause; then the exciting causes necessary to center patho- 
logical activity in the pelvic organs, especially the sex-organs. 

Surgery for the relief of fibroid tumors is the physician's 
apology for not knowing how to treat the disease. Every little 
while we hear of some physician's wife being sent to the operating 
table for the removal of her womb, tubes and ovaries, because 
she has a fibroid tumor that is causing her to have profuse men- 
struation or perhaps hemorrhage; or there may not be any more 
excuse than that the patient has great discomfort in the bowels, 
and the doctors believe that the tumor is the cause, when in the 
majority of cases the pain comes from indigestion. Because doc- 
tors send their wives to the surgeon is no proof that surgery is 
necessary; it only proves that the doctor and surgeon do not know 
what the cause is of fibroid disease. 

Ten years ago I was consulted by a young widow. She 
had the adhesions and scar tissue left from a previous pelvic in- 
flammation following an abortion; she also had a small fibroid — 
one not larger than a hen's egg. I advised her how to live, and 
then urged her to keep away from doctors. I said: "You have 
a little trouble which, if you forget and live wisely, will not 
trouble you much, nor prevent you from living to be old; but if 
you allow anyone to persuade you into being operated upon, you 
possibly will not survive the operation, or, if you do, you will 
certainly be an invalid afterward." 

One year after this advice she married a physician; a rea' 
A. M. A. doctor; a man who was better posted on quacks than 
healing. A few months after her marriage she came to see me, 
to tell me that she was going to have an operation the next day; 
that her husband and several of his medical friends had decided 



A SURGICAL ENTHUSIAST. 73 

that an operation was just the one thing lacking to put her in 
fine shape. She had better than average health, and, so far as 
being in discomfort was concerned, she was well and comfortable 
enough; her pelvic derangement hurt her mind more than her 
body. 

I wished her success and a quick recovery, and made a 
desperate effort to make her believe that I believed that she 
would come out all right. 

Poor little woman, she died before the operation was com- 
pleted. The adhesions prevented a quick operation; the time oc- 
cupied in operating, plus the anesthesia, proved too great a shock 
for her, and she died without regaining consciousness. This 
woman, like many others, alike unfortunate, could have lived to 
old age, if she had not become tangled up with a surgical enthu- 
siast. * 

After reading what I have to say about cause — the many 
causes of fibroid tumor — can any thinking reader say that he is at 
a loss to know what to do for the disease? 

The most common complaint made against my writings is: 
"Dr. Tilden doesn't tell me what to do!" The childishness of 
such a statement is certainly discouraging. 

If I say that tobacco, or overeating in starch, brings on nerve- 
depression; and that diseases cannot be cured unless the habits 
which cause them are corrected, some constant reader will write 
to me and want to know why I do not tell the Club readers how 
to cure nerve-depression caused by tobacco or starch. Stop to- 

*A surgical enthusiast is a doctor who believes in resorting to surgery 
when he doesn't know anything else to do. 



74 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

bacco, of course; and cut out bread, potatoes, etc., until better; 
then do not eat such foods oftener than once a day. 

Remove the cause! Possibly some reader will say, "What 
is the cause?" How can I know until I am informed of the style 
of living of the prospective patient? 

FOOD MUST FIT THE NEEDS. 

Quality and quantity of food must be adjusted to the needs; 
bathing and clothing must be correct; if exercise is neglected, it 
must be resumed; the mental state must be righted; if the mind is 
lacking in poise, or morbidly fed by sexual longings, self-discipline 
of body and mind must be practiced. 

Whatever is necessary to be done in righting the life must be 
done; for disease always means wrong life. 

Eating must be cut down enough to remove arterial pressure, 
and if the patient is over weight, the weight must be reduced. 

If there is much swelling and engorgement of the neck of the 
womb, with ulceration and leucorrhea, the engorgement must be re- 
lieved by wet cuppings, and copious douches of hot water should 
be used once a day. Until all symptoms are relieved, the eating 
should be limited to fruit for breakfast, vegetable soup for lunch, 
and fruit and vegetable salad for evening meal. 

To stop flow, go to bed or keep quiet, and take no food ex- 
cept the juice of a half lemon in a glass of water every three hours. 

No one should allow a disposition to flow too much and too 
often to go long without learning its cause. 

It may accompany fibroid tumor, cancer, ovarian and uterine 
congestion, incomplete abortion, mucous growths. Go to the best 
physician in your community and learn as soon as possible what 



FANATICISM. 75 

the character of the disease is, and then proceed in a rational way 
to get well. 

Take electrical and vibratory massage, or osteopathic treat- 
ment administered by a D. O. who understands his business. Es- 
tablish good habits of body and mind. 

A one-idea treatment will have no success with fibroid tumor. 
Fanaticism isn't worth much to any except small minds. Cures 
accompany broad, sane principles. 



CHAPTER VII. 



Menstrual Disorders. 




t ORM AL menstruation means health. Menstrua- 
tion begins in a small per cent of girls from eight 
to twelve years of age. Under twelve means pre- 
cocity, and, with an environment that feeds and 
at the same time restrains the emotions, may make 
a shipwreck of health and life. 
It is a safe statement to make that feeding has been of a na- 
ture to hasten physical development, in all cases of sex precocity — 
too much nitrogenous food, such as meat, eggs and cereals. If 
the ingestion of carbohydrates — sugar and starch — were not also 
great, possibly the consumption of the nitrogenous foods would not 
be too much. It should be remembered that sugar and starch fur- 
nish heat and force, which, in connection with the heat and force 
properties contained in the tissue-making foods, make the supply of 
heat and force too great, and overstimulation takes place, which 
oversupply hastens maturity in the young, and decay in the old. 

An habitual oversupply of food, or crowded nutrition, may 
be looked upon as an established fact in all women who present 
symptoms of catarrh, or who have the catching-cold habit, or who 
are troubled with menstrual disorders. 

The foundation for a catarrhal habit of body is usually laid 
in childhood. All children are overfed; a good percentage de- 
velop an enormous capacity for food, and those who do not die 



SYMPTOMS OF INDIGESTION. 11 

from some acute disease before maturity usually develop much 
nervousness. Those women who come into maturity after such a 
childhood have many symptoms of indigestion, such as bloating of 
stomach and bowels; pain at times from gas distention; constipa- 
tion may be present all the time or only occasionally; headaches 
are common; heart palpitation, dizziness and noises in the ears. 
There is always more or less functional disorder of the reproductive 
organs. Painful and profuse menstruation is quite common. 

The longer these symptoms are kept in evidence from errors 
of life, the more pronounced all symptoms become. Menstrual 
disorders must be one of the consequences, and if the victim of all 
these symptoms resorts to drugs for relief, enervation will be fur- 
ther intensified until health is lost. At about this stage, if not 
before, one or both ovaries will have to be removed, the appendix 
taken out, one or both kidneys must be cabled, and many other 
operations of less importance performed, until there is not an organ 
left for the surgeon to blame for the discomfort. But when there 
is nothing left to remove, and the patient suffers from the same old 
pains, notwithstanding they had been cut out several times, the 
physicians make a wise discovery : they find that the altitude is too 
high or too low. The prescription will be for the particular altitude 
that will take the patient the farthest away; for doctors have not 
so much appreciation of wrecks as they have of wrecking, and 
when these patients are fit for nothing except the scrap pile, they 
will be sent to chase the phantom cure anywhere, just so they are 
far enough away not to annoy the good doctors who once upon a 
time were all attention and sympathy. 

Reader, allow me to impress on your mind one of the greatest, 
most important and farthest-reaching truths connected with disease 



78 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

and cure; namely: organs do not, within themselves, go wrong. If 
the stomach is giving trouble, it comes from the fact that it is 
abused by taking food when it requires rest. Engorgement of the 
liver is forced on the organ by dietetic errors, and the cure consists 
in removing the cause — stop the errors of eating. It is childish, 
and unworthy the great medical profession, for physicians to medi- 
cate the liver. When the womb goes wrong; when the ovaries 
become irregular in functioning, and pain is experienced, it does not 
mean that these organs have rebelled and gone out of the union of 
organs ; it means that the habits of life are such as to interfere with 
the nerve and food supply; also the elimination. Why, may rea- 
sonably be asked, these organs and not others? Just why these 
organs are the nerve-storm centers, and not some others, must be 
determined by special examination. Perhaps the eating is of such 
a character as to produce irritation and engorgement or congestion 
of the reproductive organs, and this high state of irritation and 
blood pressure may cause uncontrollable sexual desires, which in 
turn cause self-abuse in mind and body, or force an otherwise vir- 
tuous girl into immorality. When this state lasts for a while, and 
the reproductive organs become hypersensitive, constipation and gas 
in the bowels will produce so much pain from pressure that the 
patient will scarcely be through one sick spell — nerve-storm — 
before she is into another. Imprudence in eating, causing an attack 
of indigestion, is enough to turn loose a morbid circle of nerve irri- 
tations ; and the symptoms are so many, and often so contradictory, 
that patients will be treated much of the time for what they haven't. 
When women are caught in such a nervous dilemma — or such a 
medley of symptoms, would better express their true state — what is 
to be done? Remove the cause! Stop the habits that build indi- 



OVEREATING HASTENS MATURITY. 79 

gestion ; teach the patient poise. All bad habits of mind and body 
must be corrected. What can surgery do ? Nothing ! Ruin such 
a patient! 

This will give the reader a slight insight into the real cause, 
and the foolishness of much so-called treatment. It is of great 
importance that children be started in life right, if we would avoid 
shipwrecking their lives. 

WHAT IMPROPER EATING DOES. 

When children are fed oatmeal, or other breakfast cereals, 
with sugar and milk, for breakfast, they should not be given other 
foods. Lunch should be fruit, cooked or raw, with milk and 
sugar; then a dinner of eggs, meat or nuts, with vegetables, salad 
and cake, cookies, pies or pudding, but no bread. 

It is a mistake to give children cereals, bread, butter, eggs or 
meat, and fruit for the three meals, and, as many do, allow them 
to eat between meals. 

Overeating hastens maturity; and when the attributes of pu- 
berty begin to manifest, in forcing children under sixteen to show a 
decided preference for companions of the opposite sex, parents be- 
gin to grow uneasy, and suspect their young daughters of unnatu- 
ralness or degeneracy; instead of correcting the cause of their pre- 
cocity, they restrain them; this restraint often grows bad feelings, 
and causes parents and children to grow apart. Parents, through 
their ignorance, build in their children an unnatural sex develop- 
ment, and then, to cap the climax of their stupidity, they believe 
that by punishing severely enough they can suppress what they in- 
terpret in their children as vicious tendencies. 

What happens? If they succeed in controlling the actions 
of a few, those so controlled die of either acute or chronic disease, 



80 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

tuberculosis being a common ending; others go insane; while the 
majority either run away and go to the bad, or marry the first man 
who offers himself in marriage. These are the senseless weddings, 
where lust predominates. 

Neither young men nor young women appear to give any con- 
sideration whatever to the qualifications or fitness of those they 
choose for life-companions. They give no thought as to how they 
are to get on ; from whence a living is to come ; whether there is any 
future for them, or the children that are to come to them. The 
gratification of a passing whim or infatuation, that they do not 
understand, is the only excuse they have for joining destinies, and 
when the ardor of infatuation passes — which it will, for it always 
does, in a short time — they can see what a mistake they have made. 
From this awakening, discontent makes its appearance, and often 
disease becomes the order of life; for no influence is more sure to 
break down health than a discontented mind. 

Parents should be wise enough to feed and otherwise care for 
their children in a way to prevent building in them an insane pas- 
sion that will wreck their future lives. How soon parents will be 
educated up to knowing of this necessity is a problem for the future 
to solve; the time will not come so long as the majority continue to 
believe that a parent's whole duty is performed when they "take 
their children to the Lord in prayer." 

To undertake to control precocity coming from forced devel- 
opment by punishment is like undertaking to confine steam, or ignite, 
and at the same time try to suppress the explosion of, dynamite. 

There are many degrees of intensity shown in those afflicted 
with precocious development. 



PAINFUL MENSTRUATION. 81 

Excessive menstruation is one form. Blessed is the girl whom 
nature protects with this safety-valve. Those who are troubled 
with too frequent and too profuse menstruation are often saved a 
worse fate ; namely, tuberculosis, sexual insanity, a life of disgrace, 
an unsuitable marriage, fibroid or ovarian tumor, chronic nervous 
invalidism, or a life of abandon ending in suicide. 

Irregular menstruation. — Only about 50 per cent of girls 
menstruate regularly ; a third menstruate every twenty-five to twenty- 
eight days; and the remaining fifth develop either amenorrhea — 
absent menstruation- — or menstruate every forty to sixty days. 

Painful menstruation. — About two-thirds to three-fourths 
suffer more or less. The average menstrual period lasts from four 
to five days. The amount of pain suffered ranges all the way 
from slight discomfort to complete disability during the period. 

Treatment: The treatment for all these different phases of 
derangement is to correct the habits of life that build precocity, or 
any sex derangement. Wrong eating must be righted, and bath- 
ing, clothing, exercise and the mental or emotional nature must be 
given the proper attention. 

To relieve the pain of menstruation, no treatment equals the 
hot bath. The water should be as hot as can be borne, and the 
bath continued until completely relieved; if the pain returns, the 
bath should be repeated. 

Whatever the prevailing medical opinion as to cause, I know 
from experience that there is no cure except the correcting of the 
errors of life, whatever they are. 

Dilation, and even curetting, is recommended; but palliation 
for a short time is all that can be expected from this treatment. 



82 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

Marriage and childbirth is thought to bring about a cure ; but 
it amounts very often to swapping off one disease for another; for 
childbirth, among those who suffer from dysmenorrhea, is accom- 
panied with laceration. See previous articles on diseases of women. 

Amenorrhea (absent menstruation). — When menstruation 
ceases, and pregnancy or advanced tuberculosis can be eliminated 
as a cause, no special concern should be attached ; but when tuber- 
culosis is present, amenorrhea indicates conservatism, and that the 
body needs building; but this symptom per se should receive little 
attention. If this symptom appears in other than chronic wasting 
diseases, the health impairment, whatever it is, must be corrected; 
when the health appears normal, no treatment is necessary. To 
attempt to establish the menstrual flow is not wise. All that should 
ever be done should be in the line of establishing a better generai 
state of health. 

When all menstrual disorders are recognized as symptoms of 
constitutional derangement, the correct treatment is suggested; 
namely, correct the general health. To give remedies for forcing 
menstruation is not uncommon, but such treatment is unnecessary, 
inexcusable and harmful. 

Many undertake to force menstruation by taking drugs, hop- 
ing to bring on abortion. Not once in a hundred times are they 
successful. Such practice is crude and bungling, and usually 
creates uterine disease. 

WHEN ABORTION IS NECESSARY. 
When abortion is necessary, which is not often, it should be 
performed by a physician who is skilled in gynecological opera- 
tions. Thousands give up their lives every year from malpractice, 
because they employ unskilled doctors and midwives. The sue- 



DRIVEN INTO LIVES OF SHAME. 83 

cessful malpractice in this line is carried on by skilled physicians 
in the hospitals of the country under the guise of curetting the 
womb. 

The most skillful work in this line is followed sooner or later 
by pelvic diseases, and not infrequently by death. 

Menorrhagia. — Prolonged and excessive menstrual flow is 
brought on from overstimulating foods, creating violent emotions 
and sexual excitement. Girls suffering from this disease become 
victims of libertines who are also sex neurotics. Such unfortunate 
girls are pronounced degenerates and incorrigibles, and treated ac- 
cordingly, instead of being put under a regimen and medical treat- 
ment that will relieve the neurotic stress. 

These subjects have a quick pulse, and often a tumultuous 
heart palpitation; they are irritable and hard to control; they are 
easily excited, and take correction as a personal affront. Many of 
these unfortunate patients turn against their parents, because their 
conduct compels the latter to watch them, and do much reproving. 

Not many parents recognize the conduct of such daughters 
as due to disease, but too often believe that their conduct is due to 
viciousness. 

Too often these unfortunate girls are driven into lives of 
shame, or unfortunate marriages, because parents turn against 
them, and drive them from home, instead of giving them sympathy 
and protection. 

The physically weaker of this class die early in life from 
tuberculosis; the stronger may experience a change after child- 
birth, if fortunate in securing a kind husband; the love of husband 
and children saves a few; others live lives of sensuality, and still 
others go into crime. 



84 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

Where the flow is very excessive and almost continuous, suf- 
ficient relief to the sex neurosis may be had to prevent the develop- 
ment of extreme so-called viciousness, and then, if the home life 
furnishes sympathy and love, the patient may be able to control 
abnormal longings. 

There is always great danger of these unfortunate invalids 
making mistakes — going astray! 

When married, and the husband falls into habits of neglect, 
these patients are liable to come under the influence of the omni- 
present social flatterer, who is ever on the lookout for neglected 
wives; his sympathy is sweet, even if it is the dew of hell; and 
before the neurotic wife learns of the falseness of her new friend, 
she has lost the respect of her best, even if neglectful, friend. 

A WIFE SHOULD BE WISE. 

A wife should be very sure that neglect really means waning 
love ; and if it does, she should examine herself and life thoroughly 
to find, if possible, if the fault lies in her. Life should be some- 
thing more than show, and earnest men have something more to 
think about than the social whirl. Earnest, busy men should not 
have added to their burdens the nerve-wrecking thought that if 
they do not keep in the swim their wives will be jobbing out their 
smiles to men of more leisure. When busy men are made jealous, 
they either neglect business and dance attendance on their wives, 
converting themselves into puppets, or dig deeper in their work, 
and resent the usurpation of their wives by society with neglect. 

Sex neurotics are fast becoming the dominating personnel of 
society. The style of life necessary to an entree into society evolves 
neurosis, and when enervation is once established, the sex function 
often predominates. Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Noble, Mr. and Mrs. 



METRORRHAGIA. 85 

Harry Thaw, Mr. and Mrs. Patterson, and Messrs. Henwood, 
Von Phul, and others recently in the limelight, are types of sex 
neurotics. 

The treatment for menorrhagia must be in line of getting rid 
of excitement: foods that will not overstimulate, such as fruits, 
vegetable salads; very little meat, eggs and desserts; bread not to 
exceed once a day; cotton or linen underwear; hot baths every 
night, of not more than five minutes' duration; no tea, coffee, to- 
bacco nor alcoholics. Everything of an exciting character must be 
avoided. All the rest possible must be had. These patients must 
retire early and get up late. No two cases can be treated the 
same; yet all will be benefited by these general suggestions. 

Metrorrhagia, or hemorrhage from the uterus, where fibroid 
tumor, menorrhagia and cancer can be eliminated as the cause, 
comes from abortion. If the hemorrhage comes on suddenly in 
ordinary health, without previous symptoms of any kind, it is safe 
to diagnose abortion, and proceed with appropriate treatment. If 
the hemorrhage has been profuse, and accompanied with pain, and 
that pain subsides, but a slow or irregular bleeding continues, it is 
safe to diagnose the disease incomplete abortion. 

If a patient is attacked with periodic hemorrhages, coming 
on monthly, or every two or three months, and the flow is profuse, 
lasting for ten days or two weeks, accompanied with more or less 
discomfort, not amounting to pain, and there is a history of two 
or three miscarriages at from the third to the fourth month, it is 
safe to diagnose the case as one of chronic auto-abortion — the 
abortion habit. I have had such cases giving histories of five to 
seven years, in which time no fewer than fifteen to forty concep- 
tions had taken place, with almost immediate expulsion, with 



86 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

hemorrhage. In every case a cure has been followed by normal 
pregnancies. 

It is no uncommon occurrence to have the disease diagnosed 
tumor, and even cancer; and, all too frequently, painful men- 
struation. 

Treatment: Rest in bed; very light eating; and, where 
symptoms appear to demand, curetting should be performed with 
a dull curet. These cases respond favorably to rest — physiologi- 
cal, physical and sexual. 

This is a type of uterine derangement found more often 
among farmers' wives than any other class of women. 

Change of life is a very large bogy, which, like teething in 
children, has to stand for a multitude of sins. About all the dis- 
eases troubling women from thirty to fifty have been pronounced 
change of life by old women, and doctors in their class. 

From thirty-five to forty-five years of age, men as well as 
women come to the "parting of the ways." At about this time in 
life the best organisms begin to show enervation from the impru- 
dences of youth, and young manhood and womanhood ; and f ortu 
nate indeed are those who, wittingly or unwittingly, change to a 
more rational style of living; those who do not, force themselves 
into premature old age; and a majority die before sixty. Those 
who work hard, and live on coarse food, and overeat, die before 
forty-five years of age. 

Farmers and their wives die early; there is an appalling 
waste of life in all branches of society, but nowhere as great as in 
the country, due to overwork and improper eating — bread, meat, 
potatoes, pie, cake and preserves. Only in the summer, and then 
for a very short time, do most farmers have green vegetables. The 



CAUSE SHOULD BE REMOVED. 87 

farmer knows the importance of grass for his stock, but his family 
can live on dry foods the year round. 

When a woman is sick or feeling badly between thirty-five 
and forty-five, the cause should be found and removed. In this 
enlightened age change of life should mean nothing; it is inexcus- 
able ignorance to give this as a reason for ill-health. 

Many women are highly nervous at this time in life; it is a 
red light, and attention should be given to it. There are errors 
of life, and unless they are corrected, premature death will be the 
price of careless indifference. When your doctor tells you that 
your disease is change of life, dismiss him, and get another. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Urinary Derangements, with the Usual Accompanying 
Female Disorders. 




INCONTINENCE OF URINE— inability to 
hold the urine. — With the first form of this dis- 
ease there is no desire to urinate, but after cough- 
ing, sneezing, or making an exertion, the patient 
finds her clothing wet. This symptom may come 
from a simple or a grave disorder; usually dis- 
placement of the abdominal and pelvic organs 
is the cause. Those who carry too much fat in the abdomen will 
after a time cultivate a sagging of all the contents of the abdomen 
and pelvis. The habit of wearing corsets too close-fitting is one 
of the leading causes. The habit of eating rapidly, and of too 
much starchy foods, ends in stomach dilation and depression. If 
we are to judge by the alleged findings by the medical staff of one 
of the large sanitariums of this country, the majority of people 
suffer from prolapsus of the stomach. 

After severe labors, where instruments have been used, the 
nerves are sometimes so severely bruised that it takes months for 
them to regain their normal tone, and while they are partially par- 
alyzed from the injury, urinating is interfered with. 

Lacerations of the vaginal wall, perineum, rectum, bladder 
and urethra at childbirth cause difficult urination from the injuries 
as well as from pressure from displacements. The breaking-down 



CAUSE OF DISPLACEMENT. 89 

of the vaginal wall permits the rectum to push into the vagina, 
causing a swelling or tumor that is called rectocele ; or the bladder 
may prolapse in the same way, and form a cystocele. These 
hernias — for that is in reality what these vaginal tumors are — 
cause much urinary trouble ; also obstinate constipation. 

Instead of bladder or rectal tumors forming from a breaking- 
down of the vaginal supports, the patient may develop a prolapsus 
of the uterus. 

INJURIES AT CHILDBIRTH. 

Childbirth is erroneously declared to be the cause of nearly 
every displacement of the pelvic organs. I know from years of ex- 
perience that the injuries at childbirth are never more than coinci- 
dental and contributory causes. The first general or universal 
cause of all displacements is enervation, and its accompanying im- 
perfect elimination, bringing about relaxation and catarrhal inflam- 
mation. When there is not a proper supply of nerve energy, all the 
viscera become heavy from sluggish circulation, and their liga- 
ments and supports relax and elongate, permitting of displacements, 
and in turn the displacements interfere with the circulation; in this 
way effects become exciting causes, and so the chain of disease is 
evolved: First there is always the primary general cause, namely, 
enervation from overstimulation; this lost energy forces imperfect 
elimination; retained excretory matter then becomes the general or 
universal disease, which I name autotoxemia. When autotoxemia 
exists, the body can be said to be prepared for the inoculation of 
any disease-producing influence. All women suffering from any 
of the symptoms or diseases I have before mentioned, or that I 
ever shall mention, must be treated for the correction of the first 
or primary derangement, and then, as a help to a more speedy re- 



90 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

covery, any local treatment that promises relief can and should be 
given ; not, however, with the intent or purpose of radically curing 
the local trouble by local treatment, for such treatment ignores 
first cause, and is childish, and must be disappointing. 

This is the pitfall in which the entire medical world is 
floundering. 

MY TREATMENT OF A CASE OF PROLAPSUS OF THE WOMB. 

To illustrate, I shall relate the history of a case that comes to 
my mind just now. A small but very stout woman came to me 
for consultation. One of the first things she demanded of me was 
to know if I thought she should go to the hospital for an operation. 
I answered that I could tell her better after I learned from what 
disease she was suffering ; whereupon she informed me that she had 
been troubled for years with an inability to pass her urine; to use 
her own words, she said: "I can't pass my urine; when I try, it 
will not run, and when I am not thinking about it, it passes with- 
out my knowing about it until I find my clothes wet. I have also 
falling of the womb; it stays out all the time, and the doctors tell 
me I must go to the hospital and have it removed, after which I 
may expect to get well of my bladder trouble." 

On examination I found her weighing three pounds to the 
inch of stature, which, on account of a light framework, was one- 
third too heavy. She was badly enervated; all the tissues of her 
body were relaxed and flabby; her abdomen was distended with 
fat and gas ; the womb was entirely outside of her body — the worst 
case of procidentia I had ever seen; both sides, where chafed by 
her limbs, were badly ulcerated. 

I assured her that she did not require an operation, if she 
really wanted to get well in a rational manner; that if she should 



WHAT FASTING WILL DO. 91 

undergo an operation, she would not be cured, and it was doubtful 
if she would experience the slightest relief from her bladder trouble 
after the operation. She expressed great satisfaction at being as- 
sured that an operation was not necessary, and that she could be 
cured without one; however, when she learned what my first pre- 
scription was, she was not very happy, for, as she expressed her- 
self: "I can't see how that can cure me!" I had told her to go 
home and fast until her womb returned to its normal position. I 
explained to her that the reason her womb was forced out of her 
body was because of the pressure in her abdomen from accumu- 
lated fat and gas. She thought my explanation was reasonable, 
and promised to go home and fast. She was permitted to drink 
all the water she had a desire for. 

She returned in ten days, and I found the womb had dis- 
appeared from the outside of her body, but was yet quite low; 
control of her urine had returned, and she was comfortable; not 
distressed after the third or fourth day of her fast, but of course 
anxious to eat if I would permit her to. I explained that, while 
the womb had returned, it was not entirely relieved of the pressure, 
and advised her to continue the fast for another week. 

About the fifteenth day ! gave her fruit three times a day for 
several days, after which I advised a non-fat-producing diet, and 
exercise in the open air, with special instructions about exercise for 
the abdominal muscles. 

This case was treated five years ago, and there has been no 
return of the urinary derangement, nor of the prolapsus. 

This has been, with slight modifications, my treatment for 
prolapsus for the past twenty years, and the results are so gratify- 
ing that I have no reason to resort to the unscientific methods of 
surgery. 



92 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

Stone in the Bladder. — Where there is difficulty in passing 
urine — where the urine starts, but suddenly stops and pain follows 
— stone should be suspected. In woman the removal of stone 
from the bladder is a simple affair, compared with the operation 
necessary to remove one from the male bladder. 

Burning in Urinating. — This symptom may come from many 
causes. When the burning or irritation is irregular in its manifesta- 
tion — coming on for a day or two, and then going away for a week 
or month — it is a reflex symptom, and depends upon a chronic in- 
flammation of the neck of the womb. The treatment of this 
symptom should be directed to the womb, and correlated derange- 
ments. 

Urethral irritation frequently appears at the menstrual period. 
When it does, there will be found very often a disease of the neck 
of the womb, with leucorrhea of a catarrhal nature, or a thin, 
watery, acrid discharge, which depends upon a systemic derange- 
ment superinduced by digestive disturbances caused by starch fer- 
mentation. The latter variety of leucorrhea causes excoriation; 
where the discharge comes in contact with the mouth of the urethra, 
irritation, inflammation and ulceration frequently follow, causing 
much smarting and burning in urination. This acid state frequently 
causes balanitis in the male. 

In chronic cases the urethra becomes the source of much an- 
noyance; indeed, it causes much suffering. On examining these 
cases, the meatus will be found red and angry-appearing. Granu- 
lations are pronounced, and adventitious tissue develops in extreme 
cases. In severe types of the disease small blood tumors form not 
unlike small pile tumors. The surrounding parts become more or 
less involved, with here and there blood-red patches that are as 



INELASTIC TISSUE. 93 

sensitive as an exposed nerve. When this disease is well developed, 
it becomes an exciting cause of digestive derangements by adding 
to the general nervous derangement. 

Occlusion of the Vagina, — I have met with a few unfor- 
tunate women who have developed partial to almost complete 
atresia (imperforation) of the vagina, caused by the acrid form of 
leucorrhea. The tendency is for this disease to contract the tissues, 
and destroy their elasticity. In examining such cases with instru- 
ments, care should be used; for the tissues will break or tear, but 
they will not stretch. This inelastic state of the tissues is very 
slow in forming, but when once developed it is hard to overcome, 
if, indeed, complete restoration can ever be brought about. 

I recognize this change in the tissues as similar to what takes 
place in arteriosclerosis, and other forms of tissue-hardening, and 
they probably come from the same exciting cause, namplx~-^~7r6ri. 
tation, causing general aciditv of th* h- -*- -"* 9 * . , W /i AM 

Treatment: Extreme cleanliness is to be observed. Where 
the urethral mouth has become the seat of vascular growths^ these 
granulations may be overcome by applying carbolic acid. Take a 
Loth pine stick and dip it in the acid, and apply to the red pomU 
onb; care should be exercised not to get the acid on normal tissue 
Where there is stricture of the urethra-a condition found in a few 
of these cases, showing that the urine also partakes of the extra- 
acid state of the system-an olive-tipped sound, the full caliber of 
the urethra, should be passed; if, however, the sound meets wh 
mU ch resistance, a smaller one should be used. The canal should 
be rubbed with the sound to stimulate absorption of the granula- 
tions. The external granulations may be rubbed with a smoort, 
instrument, instead of using the acid, if preferred. Every time the 



94 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

urine is passed, the external parts must be sponged off with warm 
water; a vaginal douche of two quarts of warm water should be 
used once or twice a day. 

Decidedly starchy foods must be proscribed, at least for the 
time being. Cereals, potatoes, matured beans and peas, should not 
be eaten until the symptoms are all better; then ever after eaten in 
moderation. Hot baths of from three to five minutes' duration, 
followed by a quick cold-sponge bath, should be taken every night, 
followed by dry rubbing. Cotton or linen underwear should be 
worn. The mental and emotional natures should be poised. All 
excesses must be avoided. 

Gonorrhea creates more distress while it lasts than any -other 
urethral disease. When it accompanies the leucorrhea described 
in the preceding disease, it is hard to know when it has run its 
course. I have had many applications for treatment for gonorrhea 
.by people suffering from acrid leucorrhea. If they ever had gonor- 
rhea, iney \-, w i __ ^mhaCgKe, coming, jn me. 

The venereal disease, wneh ireatec propc^, will run its 
course in from four to six weeks. 

Treatment: Rest, extra cleanliness, several warm-water 
vaginal douches daily, and light diet ; the less food taken, the bet- 
ter; a glass or two of buttermilk or junket three times a day. All 
excitement should be avoided. 

Syphilis. — This is an easy disease to cure, if taken in time 
and treated properly. When treated heroically, it can be made 
exceedingly formidable. The people generally look upon it as 
everlasting, and ruinous to all the future life of those who have it; 
but this is not true. This impression has been forced upon the 
people because of the ravages brought about by improper treat- 
ment. I know of no disease that yields to rational methods more 



ERROR IS IN THE SADDLE. 95 

quickly and kindly than this disease; notwithstanding, it is too 
often medicated to the extent of ruining the victim's constitution. 

It should be known that when mercury is given to patients 
suffering from an acid state of their blood, mercurio-syphilization 
is sure to follow its use, and this is the type of disease that is de- 
scribed to the people by the profession as real syphilis. It is cer- 
tainly a formidable disease when fully developed; but, as in 
typhoid fever, pneumonia, et a/., typical text-book cases cannot 
evolve without the aid of a text-book doctor. 

The world would be saved much unnecessary suffering if the 
people could accept these facts; but, alas, error is in the saddle, 
and, with his usual bigotry and arrogance, will trample simple 
truth to the earth for many long years to come. 

The fear inspired by the average physician, plus his medica- 
tion, is doing the people more harm today than would come to 
them from all the diseases, if left to nature. This is another large 
truth that must wait for fallacy to run its course. 

CLEANLINESS THE GREAT IMMUNIZING AGENT. 

Cleanliness, national, state, municipal, domestic and indi- 
vidual, is the greatest immunizing agent; when it is neglected, all 
other prophylaxes fail; when it is put in full practice, nothing else 
is needed. 

All diseases must be recognized as coming from a lack of 
cleanliness. Autotoxemia means retained excretions in the blood; 
when there is an acid state, and mercury is used as a remedy, in- 
flammation, ulceration and necrosis of the glands and bones follow. 

Sterility, — -In twenty-five per cent of sterile marriages the 
cause is faulty semen; another twenty-five per cent are caused by 
flexion or closing of the neck of the uterus with granulations and 



96 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

catarrhal secretion from inflammation; and the other fifty per cent 
are caused by a variety of causes, such as undeveloped ovaries, and 
uterine, tubal and ovarian diseases. 

Treatment: All cases caused by disease of the neck of the 
uterus are curable. 

In cases of flexion, the causes that have brought on this mal- 
formation, must be corrected. See article on "Flexions." 

Those causes of sterility that come from a filling-up of the 
neck of the womb from catarrhal secretion must be treated for the 
inflammation, and the secretion wiped out, and the canal dilated. 
Many cases are said to be due to what is known as pin-mouth. It 
is true the mouth is often small, but I never have seen a case that 
was not aggravated by inflammation, causing a thickening and en- 
gorgement. The surplus blood should be drawn off by cupping, 
and the case treated in a general way to overcome catarrh. All 
such cases are curable. 

Obesity is said to be a cause of sterility in some cases; if it 
is, the obesity can be cured, after which the sterility should be at 
an end. 

The alcohol and morphine habits are credited with being a 
cause; when they are, and a cure of the habits is secured, sterility 
should be at an end. 

Pelvic abscesses and tumors should receive appropriate treat- 
ment; then, if sterility is overcome, well and good. Whatever 
stands in the way of full health and the proper functioning should 
be corrected, for no disease can be safely left to itself so long as 
the cause is in existence ; for whatever has caused it is menacing to 
health, so long as it exists. 



STANDARD OF MOTHERHOOD DETERIORATING. 97 

Artificial Menopause.- — There are thousands of women who 
have connived, either known or unknown to the surgeons, at secur- 
ing an unnecessary operation for the removal of their ovaries; the 
object being to avoid the responsibilities of maternity. No doubt 
there are women who have a good cause for not wishing to bring 
children into the world; but the woman who can care for them, 
but won't — whose education in the line of maternal duty has been 
diverted from children to dogs and other animals — is to be pitied, 
to say the least. 

I am sorry to be forced to believe that the standard of mother- 
hood has suffered deterioration in this country in the past hundred 
years. Perhaps it is a normal degeneration, in keeping with this 
materialistic age. Women who do not wish to give birth to chil- 
dren should not be forced into doing so. 

The Effect of Castration on Women. — The natural menopause closes the 
natural mission of the woman, and in the majority of women who have been 
castrated, the sexual impulse abates in intensity much sooner than after a 
natural menopause, and in some cases wholly disappears. — Caille. 

This statement from Dr. Caille bears out my contention that 
no part of the body can be cut away with impunity. 

It takes a whole body to function properly. The abuse of 
any one organ interferes with ideal physiological synthesis, and 
must of necessity lower the normal psychical standard. 

The importance of keeping the body whole and normal for 
the purpose of maintaining the / — The individuality at its highest 
and best — will be known to the people when they have shaken off 
their brutalizing habits fastened on them by their superstitions ; then 
they will know better than to practice a style of living that brings 
on disease, and, worse yet, resort to a barbaric healing system that 



98 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

consists in still further enervating the body, when it does not cut 
away important organs. 

The practice of much of what is called modern medical 
science would be better expressed if named a modern fool's para- 
dise. 



CHAPTER IX. 



Cancer of the Neck of the Womb. 




"J HE neck of the womb degenerates. Cancerous 
diseases are common — too common! They ap- 
pear about the menopause — from thirty-five to 
forty-five years of age — and are caused by errors 
of life leading to chronic inflammation of the 
neck and mouth of the womb. 
Those most liable to develop cancer are those who are over 
weight and who have neglected to control their emotions; also 
those of quick temper, irritable and jealous. 

Shocks and grief dispose those who are autotoxemic to take 
on the disease. It is the duty of every woman to cultivate poise; 
the will should be trained in the line of self-control; it is a mistake 
to nurse trouble or cultivate grief. 

Those who live the past over every day and do not try to be 
interested in their future are in line for building diseases of some 
kind, and those who daily give way to anger or temper should not 
be surprised when cancer overtakes them. 

Cancer of the neck of the womb is usually, if not always, 
preceded by an inflammation of years' standing. The inflammation 
may be of acute or subacute form; frequently not great enough to 
draw attention to the parts, and, indeed, often so light in appear- 
ance as to escape the attention of physicians who have physically 
examined these patients. 



100 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

The history of such cases shows that there has been a slight 
leucorrhea, and usually so slight that a few patients will declare 
that they have nothing of the kind, and that they never have had 
any female diseases at all. On the other hand, there are many 
who give a history of pronounced uterine disease, for which they 
have taken a great deal of ineffectual treatment. These are the 
cases that have suffered injury at childbirth, and have gone through 
with operations for the repair of lacerations ; but with all this treat- 
ment they have not been successful in finding a cure for the in- 
flammation. 

On examination, before cancer has evolved in the first of 
these types — those who declare they never have had uterine dis- 
ease — there will be found, in a small per cent., a history of sterility, 
dating back to an abortion (criminal in most cases) several years 
before, and they may acknowledge to having had a little discom- 
fort at the menstrual periods; but the discomforts to which they 
acknowledged are more from headaches and general nervousness 
than pain or disagreeable sensations in the region of the womb. 
The neck of the womb will be found hard, not much larger than 
natural, but on pressure, or on bending it forward or backward, 
pain will be experienced. The hardness will be pronounced — so 
great that it will be with difficulty that a scarifying knife can be 
forced into it, and then there will be very slight bleeding. 

The second type of these cases usually presents a very much 
enlarged neck and mouth to the womb ; there may and may not be 
ulceration. The neck is not sensitive except at the bottom of old 
lacerations, which, when touched with a probe or dressing forceps, 
will cause pain to be experienced. These cases have a heavy, 
thick, catarrhal leucorrhea; often much backache, with aching 
down the limbs. This type of uterine disease does not present so 



OFFENSIVE GAS. 101 

many reflex symptoms as the former, although both may have 
symptoms of heart and digestive derangements, with much gas in 
the bowels, and constipation. 

Going before these local symptoms is a history of autotox- 
emia; if questioned carefully, these patients will give a history of 
careless, haphazard eating; constipation is common, with possibly 
occasional attacks of diarrhea, which may not last for more than 
a day, the bowel discharges being accompanied by a disagreeable 
odor. These patients frequently have offensive gases from the 
bowels, coated tongues, and bad breath. If the bowel discharges 
are examined, more or less catarrhal mucus will be seen; they are 
troubled with languor, or a tired feeling, and have frequent short 
sick spells, lasting for a day or two; the sickness may be bilious- 
ness, indigestion, neuralgia, or headache. They are never quite 
well; under the stress of social life, or daily cares, they may forget 
for a few hours, or for a few days, that they do not feel just right ; 
but when they stop to think of themselves, they can truthfully say 
that they never feel just right. 

GAS-POISONING. 

When the constitution suffers in this way for years, the tissues 
of the body become so gas-poisGned, from absorption of intestinal 
gas, that cell-life is badly oppressed, and tissue renewal sadly inter- 
fered with, after which any part of the body, that has undergone 
hardening from local irritation and inflammation, is liable to take 
on degeneration. If the tissue-hardening is of the neck of the 
womb, or the body of the womb, or of enlarged glands in the 
breast or any other part of the body; or the hardening be of the 
lip or throat of the tobacco-smoker, or of the pylorus or lower end 
of the stomach, cancerous degeneration may start up. 



102 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

Hemorrhage, pain and discharge are the most pronounced 
symptoms of uterine cancer; but as other diseases are accompanied 
by the same symptoms, it is well to be careful, so as to avoid, if 
possible, making a mistake in diagnosis. 

Uterine Fibroids are frequently accompanied with hemor- 
rhage, pain and leucorrhea. 

When a woman forty years of age is experiencing these 
symptoms, she should go to a competent physician and have her 
disease diagnosed. There is one serious drawback to adopting 
this advice; namely, the profession is insane on the subject of 
surgery, and it would be almost impossible to find a physician 
competent to make a diagnosis who would not insist on a surgical 
operation. If he should find fibroid disease, cancer, or periodic 
congestions, or any other pronounced pelvic disorders, then opera- 
tion would be suggested and insisted upon from the beginning. So 
insistent are doctors in urging patients with even trivial disorders 
to undergo surgical operations that I often think that professional 
men are more to be dreaded than disease. 

WILL CUTTING OUT CANCER CURE IT? 

Suppose the patient has cancer ; will any intelligent physician 
declare that cutting it out will cure it? No! The most that 
advocates of operating admit is that occasionally a case will sur- 
vive the knife two years. But, unfortunately, all too often the 
disease manifests immediately; and why not? How can cutting 
away a local manifestation, of a constitutional disorder, possibly 
eradicate the disease? 

We have heard and read much about the cancer germ — 
about experiments on fish; and that our scientists are about to 
evolve a synthetic drug that will cure cancer. But, reader, allow 



ORGANIC FUNCTIONING. 103 

me to go on record, in advance of these expected discoveries, and 
say that all these promised cures — specifics — will prove "vanity, 
vanity and vexation of spirit;" for the causes, on which these 
promised cures are based, are dreams, beautiful dreams. In all 
probability I shall live long enough to give these discoverers ample 
opportunity to evolve their cures; and when they do, I shall take 
pleasure in sounding their praises, and recommending their rem- 
edies, and I shall try to take their "I told you so!" in a becoming 
manner. 

My reason for not believing that curative remedies will be 
found by the investigations now in progress is because scientists all 
start with the hypothesis that germs cause cancer, and, to my mind, 
this is a mistake. 

For years before the cancer evolves, the victim is troubled at 
times with offensive gas from the bowels; the discharges are ill- 
smelling, and the emanations from the body are sufficient to make 
the patient complain of the odor. 

Organic functioning of bowels, liver and kidneys becomes so 
impaired and vitality runs so low that devitalized parts of the body 
— such as a thick, hardened cervix; a thickened pylorus; chronic 
irritation of the tonsils, found in smokers, or those who have had 
frequent attacks of tonsilitis ; chronically enlarged lymphatic glands ; 
enlarged mammary glands of years' standing; in fact, any indu- 
rated tissue — degenerate. 

In this process of systemic degeneration, many victims fall 
by the way with acute diseases; others with chronic diseases, such 
as tuberculosis, diabetes, Bright's disease, heart disease, apoplexy 
and nervous diseases, including such as ataxia. Only a small per 
cent of those who start on this road of decay last long enough to 
take on cancer. 



104 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

A fully developed cancer means a body far advanced in 
degeneration, and the manufacture of intestinal gas has been so 
great that the entire body is saturated with it. After this satur- 
ation, local indurations break down, because not enough oxygen 
is received to vitalize and keep their spark of life alive. When 
decomposition takes place in the indurated tissue or gland, septic 
infection takes place, which, added to the chronic gas poisoning, 
soon destroys life. 

It is after septic infection starts that germ-life becomes active 
in cancer; hence, if I am right, the primary cause reaches back to 
wrong life, with the same autotoxemia that furnishes the ground- 
work of all diseases; and germs are purely incidental, and play a 
secondary part. 

Cancer and syphilis have symptoms in common. The resem- 
blance is acknowledged by the best physicians, who not infrequently 
confound the symptoms. 

So far as I know, there has been no persistent effort made by 
investigators to discover in what respect these diseases differ, if they 
differ, or in what respect their symptoms agree, if they agree. 

I have arrived at an hypothesis which, when applied to all 
malignant and infectious diseases, brings order out of chaos. My 
hypothesis is that death from diseases is brought on in two ways; 
namely, by shock from hyperpyrexia (high temperature) , or by the 
abolition of the sustaining power of the nervous system through de- 
generation of the blood brought about by infection. 

To illustrate : Scarlet fever or diphtheria may destroy life by 
shocking the nerve centers from excess temperature ; or by rendering 
the blood so toxic from absorbed infection that fatal enervation 
takes place. This latter is blood infection, and it is gradually 



INFECTION THE SAME. 105 

brought on in malignant diseases from putrefaction of tissue that 
has become so indurated that its supply of oxygen is cut off. 

I assume that infection is the same, whether generated in a 
wound, in typhoid fever, in an ulcerated lung, or in syphilis or 
cancer. No doubt this statement appears preposterous to a mind 
that has always thought of acute, specific and malignant diseases as 
distinct entities, springing from distinct causes, and destroying health 
and life by distinct poisons ; but if the real thinker will go over the 
subject carefully, and attempt to reconcile all exceptions and incon- 
gruities that are constantly developing and throwing doubt and un- 
certainty on every rule of diagnosis and treatment, as understood 
and practiced today, he will finish his task in bewilderment ; for 
order is not to be found, but, on the contrary, chaos reigns supreme. 
After finishing this herculean task, if he will go with me over my 
theory, he will find everything simplified; certainty takes the place 
of uncertainty, and he will not be troubled with making explanations 
that do not explain the many exceptions to rules. 

My theory simplifies the germ question; for it explains why 
the germ theory sometimes appears to work out agreeably to pre- 
diction, and as often fails to do so. 

Instead of attempting to prove the impossible — that every 
disease has its specific germ — assume that decomposition has taken 
place and sepsis has evolved, and the germs have taken on toxicity 
because their habitat forces this change on them. When the sepsis 
with which they are charged spends its force, they become innocent, 
and will remain non-toxic until again charged with poisons. 

A germ either is toxic or it is not, and the fact that the sup- 
posed most malignant germs are found devoid of toxicity should 



106 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

compel every thinking mind to believe that their toxicity is acci- 
dental, and that the cause must be looked for outside of themselves. 

I know the contention is made that germs must get into a dis- 
ease process, or decomposition cannot take place. But germs are 
omnipresent, and are non-toxic until made toxic by their environ- 
ment. 

When oxygen is cut off from a part, decomposition takes 
place, and then the germs that were present all the time take on 
toxicity. Why did they not take on this state before decomposi- 
tion? If they were toxic, why was it that they had no such influ- 
ence until decomposition from some other cause started up? If 
gonococci remain dormant in the tissues, which is declared on med- 
ical authority to be true, what causes them to take on renewed 
activity? Decomposition, which the]) had no part in developing. 
(See my work on "Venereal Diseases.") 

It may be asked: To what is toxicity due? When life is 
extinct, decay takes place, the tissues melt down and generate a 
cadaveric poison — an alkaloid which is toxic; and everything be- 
comes toxic that is saturated with this alkaloid of decomposition. 
It is the antithesis of the leufyomaine alkaloid: one is destructive, 
the other conservative; one causes death, the other conserves life; 
and it is the alkaloid of decomposition that imparts toxicity to every- 
thing it saturates. When this poison is overcome — when it ceases 
to be generated in a disease process — the process soon becomes 
aseptic. 

The first cause of toxicity is the generation of this alkaloid of 
decomposition. When the discharges from a wound, from the 
bowels, from the urethra, from the bronchial tubes, from a syphilitic 
ulcer, from an ulcerating cancer, are charged with this poison, they 



ALL DISEASES ARE LINKED TOGETHER. 107 

are infectious, and are capable of imparting infection to whatever 
living tissue happens to give them hostage. 

The poison generated in all disease processes is the same; 
when the symptoms of its poisonous influence varies, it is due to the 
tissues involved, the amount of poison absorbed, and the bodily 
resistance. 

In such diseases as cancer and syphilis, nature has time to pre- 
pare her defenses. These diseases are walled off by organized 
infiltrations or exudates. This fortification is to prevent absorption 
of the decomposition. It is not entirely successful, but the poison 
gains entrance very slowly; and that is why these diseases run a 
chronic course. In wounds where discharges are pent up, absorp- 
tion takes place rapidly, and death comes soon; but the character 
of the poison must be the same. 

By working on this hypothesis, all diseases are linked together 
into one large family; obscurity is illuminated, and a rational mode 
of prevention and cure must be the legitimate outcome. 

So long as the theory of multiple, specific causation is adhered 
to, there cannot be anything but chaos reigning in the realm of cure. 

The time must come when prevention will receive proper at- 
tention ; and prevention, first, last and all the time, must be directed 
to restoring resistance by improving nutrition. 

Treatment: The outcome of treating cancer must of neces- 
sity be problematical; for it is a disease that makes its appearance 
when nerve energy is at a low ebb, and much time is required to 
coax back lost resistance, if it can be done at all; for nutrition is 
more than often in the relentless death grip of autotoxernia, aided 
by septic infection. When the disease is located in a vital part of 
the body, and interferes with important functioning, a cure is 



108 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

almost impossible; for its destructive influence is greater than any 
possible curative influence can be. 

If the disease has advanced to the breaking-down stage, where 
glandular involvement has taken place — where all the glands in the 
immediate locality have become infected — the knife can remove 
the local disease, and all palpable glands involved, but it leaves 
behind the elusive infection and the enervation, both of which 
always foil the surgeon; and this favors further infection. 

SEPTIC INFECTION IN CANCER. 

Septic infection, in true cases, when once established, is recog- 
nized by physicians as the cancerous cachexia; but the general 
professional opinion is that this constitutional dyscrasia comes from 
some peculiar cancerous infection, or blood-poisoning from a spe- 
cific cancer germ; but I believe that it is nothing more than the 
ordinary sepsis that can come from decomposition of any tissue that 
is forced to take on degeneration from having its blood supply cut 
off. Of course, in a cancer subject there is less resistance, because 
of the profound state of enervation. Cancer, in point of time, moves 
along with great deliberation; seldom does infection develop 
rapidly; however, its progress is as persistent as its destruction is 
inevitable. 

Those advocating the germ theory of disease will declare 
there can be no sepsis without germs, and according to Pasteur 
there can be no germs without air. My belief is that there can be 
no sepsis without oxygen starvation; sepsis in animal life, and 
fermentation in vegetal life, are due to lost power for assimi- 
lating oxygen; every living thing dies when deprived of air. 

Cancer is not cancer primarily; there must first be a profound 
state of impaired health, marked by autotoxemia; then the 



WHEN INDURATIONS CHANGE. 109 

catarrhal inflammations that always accompany autotoxemia, and, 
indeed, are related to it as effect is related to cause, build indura- 
tions. Induration means hardened tissue — a tissue to which the 
normal supply of oxygen is cut off. The life or vitality of indura- 
tions is much lower than is the standard of the bodies in which 
they are found; hence any lowering of the general health means 
a lowering of vitality in indurations. 

Just when these indurations change from benignancy to ma- 
lignancy is when the supply of oxygen runs so low that their 
slender vitality gives way, and decay sets in. It is at this stage 
that the alkaloids of decomposition evolve, and it is now that the 
cancer cachexia begins to develop. If indurations are large, the 
decay from oxygen starvation may start in very gradually, and only 
small, isolated areas of cellular tissue take on decomposition. This, 
however, be it as small as it can be, is enough to start up systemic 
infection. After infection has once become established, there is 
little hope for the patient, even if the induration, cancer or malig- 
nant growth, be removed "roots and all." 

THE TREATMENT OF CANCER IS UNCERTAIN. 

The reader should see, from what I have said, that the treat- 
ment and cure of cancer is an unsolved problem, and must be very 
uncertain, and points back to prevention by righting the life. 

If a so-called cancerous growth (induration of ordinary 
tissue or of glands) is removed before there has been interstitial 
cellular necrosis (death of small, isolated portions of tissue), and 
the consequent constitutional infection, the cure is complete; but 
habits of life must be corrected before these patients are made 
safe. If there has been a slight infection, enough to cause a few 
glands in the immediate locality of the growth to take on a state 
of induration, unless the patient be given a treatment that will 



1 1 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

remove the malnutrition on which the induration depends, these in- 
fected glands will degenerate and send out fresh infection, involving 
other glands, until the entire organism is overwhelmed. It is then 
that the disease is said to have returned. It is after the surgeon 
has extirpated all that he can that the real work of curing begins, 
and the force of treatment must be directed to restoring nutrition 
by establishing elimination, and conserving nerve energy in every 
way, until enervation is overcome and resistance built up. Of 
course, this means getting rid of chronic autotoxemia, and unless 
this is attended to, either cancer or some other type of disease will 
carry the patient off prematurely. 

It must not be lost sight of that the constitutional derange- 
ment that has required years to develop is a continuous cause of 
catarrhal inflammations and indurations, and the physician must 
go after this great primary derangement as a first and last step in 
the curing of cancer, or any other disease. 

The reason why there are so many cures made by fakirs and 
ignoramuses is because the nature of cancer is not understood, and 
their alleged cures are not cures of cancer at all, but removal of 
simple growths and indurations, which may or may not in time 
have taken on a true cancerous state, which means necrosis with 
septic infection. I do not dispute that many of these so-called 
cancers were diagnosed cancer by physicians of standing, but un- 
fortunately the profession is almost as incapable of diagnosing 
cancer as are those who have no medical education at all. Why? 
Because it believes the cause to be germs, and acts on that hy- 
pothesis. 

The medical profession is its own worst enemy, for it prog- 
noses many diseases incurable, and after scaring patients away 
with its diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, these patients go to 



INABILITY TO BREAK HABITS. 1 I 1 

faith cures, or some drugless method, or a healer of some kind, 
who has the enthusiasm peculiar to ignorance, and get well. Not 
all get well; but those who are made sick by drugs and dis- 
couragement get well. Nearly the entire Christian Science mem- 
bership has been cured by "science" treatment of diseases stupidly 
manufactured by M. D.'s. 

So long as the profession works on its present medical hy- 
potheses, it must not be surprised at seeing ignorance and fanaticism 
performing wonderful cures of cases on which it has ignominiously 
failed. There is no use to appeal to the people for protection 
against quacks ; for all that the people want, in the ultimate analysis, 
is a cure. If the most stupid ass furnishes the hope, and removes 
the fear — conditions necessary to cure someone left discouraged 
and hopeless by a reputable physician — the people see the failure 
and the cure, and that settles it; at once the ignoramus becomes a 
finer physician than the one who really has an education, but per- 
verts it with false theories. 

When cancer cures have followed the treatment of ignorant 
pretenders or quack doctors, it is when the tumor has not passed 
from a simple into a malignant state. 

After infection has taken place, it is doubtful if the patient 
can recover; for his enervation and consequent autotoxemia have 
been great enough to allow a simple induration to become a cancer. 
Add to profound autotoxemia septic infection, and we have more 
than most constitutions can stand. 

One great drawback to a cure is the patient's inability to 
break and stay away from bad habits. Few can or will make 
the personal sacrifice necessary to get well. A cure means eternal 
vigilance on the part of the physician in watching nutrition. When 
there is the slightest indication that food is being given to the full 



1 1 2 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

power of digestion, be it ever so small in amount, it must be cut 
down, or the patient must fast, so as to give the body physiological 
rest, or as much as it can get. House-cleaning cannot be success- 
fully carried on unless the food supply is short of digestive capacity. 
This is true in all diseases, but especially true of cancer. The 
reason for this is that elimination must be active, and when the 
organism is taxed to the limit with food intake, the eliminative debris 
fails to be thrown off ; hence more accumulation, and more advance 
of the disease. 

No success can be had with advanced cases, unless the 
patient is sensible, submissive, and willing to be guided instead of 
following his own inclinations. 

The cure, if cure can be made, consists of conserving every 
little nerve energy. Patients given over to worry, fear, and desire 
to gratify small wants in opposition to instructions, can't get well. 

Conservation of energy in every way is nature's cure, and 
there can't be any other* 



CHAPTER X. 



Treatment of Cancer of the Womb. 




^ANCER CURES are largely failures. The 
one sure cure for cancer is to prevent its de- 
velopment. But people are not ready for pre- 
vention. Only a few feel the need of correct- 
ing the errors of life as a means of cure, and 
most must believe that they are going to die be- 
fore they are willing to give up bad habits. 
This is not to be wondered at when the profession either 
ignores or really doesn't know the harm that comes from crowding 
nutrition. So long as physicians practice the habits that undermine 
health, and do not appear to know any more about health require- 
ments than laymen, and indeed are no more immune from disease 
than people who do not pretend to know anything about the preser- 
vation of health, it will be difficult to popularize disease preventions, 
when the prevention means the giving-up of enervating habits. 

Since starting to write this article, I received by mail a paper 
from a friend in one of the cities of Ohio. In looking through it I 
found a marked item announcing the death of a prominent physician 
of that city. Death came unexpectedly; the doctor believed him- 
self well, and his friends saw nothing about his general appearance 
that indicated disease. It is a mistake to believe that death will 
come unannounced — without giving plenty of warning. The paper 
stated that the doctor had been in his usual good health. That 



1 1 4 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

statement uncovers one of the weakest points about the profession 
of medicine. Doctors are seemingly unable to detect a dangerous 
state of blood pressure, but, ridiculous as it appears, they often 
recognize a dangerous plethora as a prime condition of health. 

This is the price paid by the profession for running after ex- 
trinsic causes for disease, when the cause is within the body, built 
by errors of the daily life. 

A prevention of disease, and a builder of long life, can be had 
by the people when they learn their limitations in all lines of expend- 
iture of nerve energy, and then learn to give them a wholesome 
respect. 

To correct constitutional derangements, and restore normal 
functioning, requires time, and this most people will not give. 
They have been accustomed to thinking of quick cures by drugs, 
and they will not brook the slow process of physiological readjust- 
ment. Snapshot cures have been taught and practiced by the 
medical profession so long that the people expect them; conse- 
quently, they must have them, and if the employed physician doesn't 
cure at once, another will be consulted. This restlessness and de- 
mand for quick cures keep most medical men on the alert for new 
and more pronounced palliatives ; for it should not be forgotten that 
drugs never cure; all they can do is to relieve and complicate the 
disease. 

After women, suffering from diseases of the reproductive 
organs, have traveled from one specialist to another, each one fail- 
ing to even relieve with his local treatment, they become discour- 
aged, and are easily persuaded to undergo a radical operation. 
Why not? The best specialists have failed after "doing all that 



CANCER SHOULD BE PREVENTED. 115 

medical science could do." Of course, there is nothing left to be 
done except to extirpate the womb or ovaries, or both. 

Is an operation necessary? Yes, unless a physician is found 
who knows enough to correct the constitutional derangement. It 
is necessary if so-called physicians are employed, because they 
know nothing of the necessity of correcting nutrition, upon the 
perversion of which the disease depends for its continuance. Will 
the operation cure? Yes, it cures the womb trouble; for when 
the womb is gone, it cannot give any more trouble; but the con- 
stitutional derangement will remain, and will manifest in some 
other part of the body. 

Many are not operated upon; their uterine disease continues 
for a few years, and cancer develops; or, if the womb is taken 
out, a cancer may develop in the breasts, on the lips, or in some 
other part of the body. Instead of removing the womb, or fooling 
away valuable time in giving impotent local treatment, what 
should the treatment be? Correct the errors of life; feed care- 
fully, restore nutrition to the normal, and relieve the local disease 
by an appropriate treatment. 

CANCER SHOULD BE PREVENTED. 

Any woman properly treated two years prior to the de- 
velopment of cancer can be spared the misfortune. Every woman 
should make sure that her health is all it should be between 
thirty-five and forty-five years of age. Neglect is inexcusable at 
any time of life, but especially so during these ten years. 

Cancer is a sure sign of filth in the body. It means, be- 
sides other things, infection from absorption of decomposition in 
the intestines. It does not develop without warning. It does not 
spring into existence and manifest itself in healthy people — people 



1 1 6 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

in full health. Cancer means wrong life practiced until nerve 
energy is lost and organic functioning so impaired that elimination 
is inefficient. 

When people are as intelligent as they should be, they will 
feel the importance of living right, so as to maintain health, and 
when this comes to pass there will not be such diseases as cancer. 

Cancer should be cured by prevention; for, when once 
established, a cure means leading nutrition back to the normal, 
and this requires two or three years of very rigid discipline. One 
single cause of cancer that stands out more prominently than all 
others in a few subjects, is lost vitality from excessive venery. 
When this energy is lost, it takes time and painstaking, intelligent 
attention to body-building to restore it. No crime against nutri- 
tion is greater than a giving-way to thoughts of, and over-indul- 
gence in, gratifying lust, and after the nervous system is once 
prostrated by this habit, the victim is in line for cancer, arterio- 
sclerosis and arthritis deformans. These diseases mark a pro- 
found state of enervation; one that cannot be overcome except by 
intelligent care intelligently carried out. To believe that the dis- 
ease can be cut out is a travesty on intelligence. 

Ovarian Diseases. — Since the ovaries are so situated as to be 
protected from injury, it is doubtful if they are diseased once in a 
hundred times when they are said to be. 

I have become as skeptical on the subject of ovarian disease 
as I am on the subject of subnormal temperature. 

Many people apply to me for advice who have been told by 
physicians that they have "ovarian disease," but on examination 
I find none; hence I have decided that diagnosing all cases of 
pain in the right or left pelvis as "ovarian" has become a pro- 
fessional bad habit. I find the same true regarding subnormal 



ERRORS OF DIAGNOSIS. 1 1 7 

temperature. In examining those who are said to have it, I 
usually find them with a normal temperature. 

There is a lot of carelessness, as well as ignorance, displayed 
in diagnosing and treating women's diseases. 

Inflammation of the neck of the womb, uterine flexions, in- 
juries to the neck of the womb at childbirth, and constipation, are 
all liable to be accompanied by pain, which patients describe as 
located in the right or left side, extremely low down in the ab- 
domen. 

I have been proving the error of diagnosing such pain as 
ovarian by curing it with local treatment to the womb, and cor- 
recting the general health; or, if there is rectal disease, I correct 
it, and the so-called "ovarian" disease disappears. 

PIN-MOUTH WOMB. 

In what is known as pin-mouth, or an unusually small mouth 
of the womb — either internal or external — there is imperfect 
drainage; the menstrual or other secretions are retained; they de- 
compose and, when absorbed, cause systemic infection. These 
patients are exceedingly nervous; they have much pain in the re- 
gion of the ovaries; they are anemic, dysemic or chlorotic, and 
always dyspeptic. With rare exceptionsT~they show an underfed 
appearance, but it is not from lack of food — but it is from a 
failure of nutrition. 

These people are exceedingly nervous; many of them are 
called "neurasthenic" (whatever that means) — a word as mean- 
ingless as "biliousness," "hysteria" and "hypochondria." The 
younger subjects are often troubled with acne of the face, espe- 
cially about the menstrual periods; there is more or less pain in 
the region of the ovaries during menstruation. If not in pain, 



1 1 8 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

there is always malaise, general excitability; perhaps headache, 
nausea and capricious appetite. 

Patients may present all these symptoms or only a few; 
some may be badly run down, while others appear to be in near 
health. 

What shall the disease presenting all these symptoms be 
called? It is not best to call it by any name, for names are dan- 
gerous. They cause doctors to practice a stereotyped treatment. 
If pain is pronounced, and apparently in the ovarian region, the 
diagnosis too often will be ovarian disease, and the treatment 
given will fit any other disease as well. If the pain is located in 
the region of the bladder, urethra, womb or appendix, the diag- 
nosis and treatment will be in keeping with the location and, need 
less to say, must fail; for, first, last and all the time, the real dis- 
ease is autotoxemia, with a local aura of nerve irritation, centered 
in the pelvis, which may be intensified when, by childbirth or abor- 
tion, the womb is injured; or a ruptured hymen, because of ex- 
cessive venery, fails to heal, leaving sensitive granulations; or the 
urethra becomes the seat of sensitive granulations, caused by ex- 
cessive acidity of the urine; or an imperfectly cured gonorrhea; 
all of which must receive attention, but not to the exclusion of 
correcting the general health. Indeed, these local diseases cannot 
be cured until enervation and elimination are restored to the 
normal. 

It is no uncommon experience for these patients to consult 
me after they have had one or both ovaries removed or the womb 
taken out, the appendix removed, or after being subjected to sev- 
eral dilations or curetments. Are they made any better by the 
operations? As a rule, they are made worse. 



RADICAL OPERATIONS. 1 1 9 

A pronounced case requires months of correct treatment to 
bring the sufferer back to full health; but all such cases can be 
cured, if they can be induced to follow instructions long enough 
for their bodies to undergo a complete physiological readjustment. 

It is a crime to submit these patients to radical operations; 
for when the womb or ovaries, or both, are removed, the paralysis 
of will, which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of pro- 
nounced types of this derangement, is made worse. 

A truth that should be widely known is that sex virility gives 
will-power. The more this power is dissipated in unrestrained 
venery, the more the will gives way. 

Self-abuse — onanism — and the lascivious mind that accom- 
panies it, will, in the end, break the will down entirely, and ren- 
der the victim helpless and hopeless, so far as being able to re- 
solve and carry out necessary work or study. 

SLIGHT IRRITATIONS SHOULD BE CURED. 

A slight irritation of the reproductive organs, that can and 
should be cured, often becomes the exciting cause of nympho- 
mania; and when this habit is established for a length of time, 
will is lost and the victim has no power to do anything except in 
the line of her wants, and her wants are all in the line of self- 
destruction. These types are often abused by needless and sense- 
less operations. Often ovaries are said to be diseased, and op- 
erations performed or recommended. What can an operation do? 
Not cure, surely? But it will remove the virile energy which, if 
wisely used and conserved, will go far toward restoring the pa- 
tient to a normal state of health; but, if sacrificed by an opera- 
tion, the body is deprived of its will-potency, and further de- 
terioration will follow. 



120 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

The reproductive organs cannot be sacrificed with impunity, 
and there is seldom, if ever, any excuse; for the diseases for 
which they are extirpated can be cured more readily if these or- 
gans are retained. 

The tendency of all bodily derangements is to eventually 
end in impotency — pronounced enervation — if the causes of the 
derangements are continued. 

Those people who suffer with the diseases I have been de- 
scribing can be divided into two classes, namely: those who are 
strongly sexed, and those with little sex development. The first 
class menstruate freely, and often too much; they have a large 
bust development, and the mammary glands are kept in a sensi- 
tive state through sympathy with the reproductive organs. Ex- 
cessive menstruation acts as a safety valve, so to say; for unless 
the hyperemia is relieved by a bleeding that will deplete the re- 
productive organs, young women so afflicted will suffer greatly 
from headache, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms of indiges- 
tion, such as bloating of the bowels, constipation, palpitation of 
the heart, flushed face, and general nervousness; the nervousness 
sometimes bordering close to frenzy. Of course, social and do- 
mestic environments will lend complexion to the symptoms. Where 
parental discipline is bad, and there is much friction between the 
girl and her parents, the former will be made desperate by at- 
tempts at unusual correction. Among those girls who have been 
allowed to have their own way, until this disease of adolescence 
makes it necessary for parents to change from a state of careless 
indifference to active vigilance and restraint, there will be much 
friction. 

Girls in this state do not realize that a change has come over 
them, but they do see a great change in their parents, and misin- 



REAP WHAT THEY SOW. 121 

terpret it as an evidence that their parents do not love them any 
more; for where father or mother, or both, once winked at the 
license they took, they now object strenuously, and even interpose 
physical restraint. The girls cannot see that their every want is 
in answer to a sex impulse, and the parents believe their daughters 
have suddenly developed symptoms of degeneracy. Both are 
wrong; the parents' love has not waned, but they feel that they 
must save their daughters at any cost. 

Parents of these girls are reaping what they have sown. 
Instead of properly disciplining them in their childhood, they al- 
lowed them to have their own way; for their wants were childish 
and innocent, and it was easier to allow them to do as they 
pleased than to restrain them. Hence, as children they grew up 
knowing no better than to gratify every impulse. Then, when 
the sex impulses began to arise out of the subconscious — impulses 
that the child-mind cannot interpret — they were surprised to meet 
with their first resistance, and from this point in their lives they 
found opposition on every hand. The more these girls are op- 
posed, the more they are determined to have their own way; the 
mental state that is developed because of their fancied abuse, tends 
to intensify their pelvic irritations. 

The reproductive organs at this stage of development will 
take on new irritations from self-abuse or lascivious day and night 
dreams. This is a dangerous period in a girl's life, and, unless 
properly handled, a life — or, what is more, a character — may be 
lost. 

The foregoing symptoms belong to a pronounced type of 
ovarian and uterine irritation. If there is excessive menstruation, 
this discharge will greatly relieve both the physical, mental and 



122 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

moral natures. Marriage will bring relief; but if marriage is 
immediately followed by gonorrheal infection, or abortion with 
slight septic infection, life will be ruined. These infections, con- 
tracted while the reproductive organs are aglow with excitement, 
causing irritation and hyperemia, will spread like a prairie fire; 
the womb, fallopian tubes and ovaries will become involved, and 
health will probably be lost forever. The surgeon may remove 
these organs, but, unfortunately, the operations fail too often to 
take away all the disease. 

RUIN WOMEN'S LIVES. 

If wives learn of the cause of all their troubles, it is likely 
to ruin their peace of mind and render them pessimistic for life. 
Even if the reproductive organs are not removed, sterility is in- 
evitable, and the sequel amounts to a procession of all sorts of 
diseases, one following the other, rendering life miserable; such 
as abscesses in tubes and ovaries; chronic inflammation of the 
lining membrane of the womb; ovarian and uterine tumors. The 
victim is no sooner out of one trouble than she is in another. 

One of the prettiest young women I ever knew became the 
victim of just such a physical disaster, and after suffering for four- 
teen years, and undergoing all sorts of operations, she finally died 
in a hospital where she had gone for the removal of a suppurating 
tumor. She and her husband were possessed of most excellent 
physiques and when married were, to all appearances, as healthy 
as they were handsome and happy. Both passed out of this life 
before they reached forty years of age; she tortured to death by 
disease, he by remorse at being the cause of so much suffering to 
the one he loved. 



INSANITY. 123 

At times those suffering from congestion of the reproductive 
organs will go insane and commit insane acts.* 

In all probability Miss Parks was suffering from symptoms 
such as I have described. As stated before, these cases are often 
operated upon for appendicitis, but there is no more excuse for 
removing the appendix than there is for removing the womb or 
ovaries, or both. All the pelvic organs are in a state of hyperemia, 
and if there is no local pain, there will be reflex pains, such as 
deranged digestion, pain in the bowels, pain in the appendix or in 
the region of the appendix, and pain in the region of the chest 
or heart. But when properly treated, the most disagreeable 
symptoms disappear. 

As stated, those who suffer with pelvic derangements are 
divided into two classes. The first I have described are those 
who have excessive menstruation. There are others who are 
troubled with amenorrhea (absence of menstruation), or their 



* Two-year-old Helen Marguerite Green, the only daughter of Mr. and 
Mrs. J. H. Green, of 943 Kerby Street, was beaten to death yesterday after- 
noon with a shoe tree by her cousin, Frieda Parks, daughter of F. E. Parks, a 
carpenter, 359 Ivy Street, at the home of the Parks girl, following a sudden 
attack of insanity, who, after crushing the skull of her tiny victim with the shoe 
tree, slashed the child's throat with a razor, almost severing the head from the 
body. 

The murder was committed at the home of the Parks girl, where Mrs. 
Green, who is a sister of Mrs. Parks, had gone with her baby to spend the 
afternoon while Mrs. Parks made a trip to the city. 

The sudden insanity of Miss Parks was due, it is claimed by Dr. W. B. 
Hamilton, who was called, to a long siege of illness. Miss Parks has recently 
been operated on for appendicitis and has been ill for more than a year. Pre- 
vious to that time she was employed as a stenographer for E. E. Lytle, a rail- 
road official. The neighbors declare that the girl was a beautiful character and 
had never displayed any mania of any nature before yesterday's outbreak. 

Dr. Hamilton declares her mania was to kill the one she loved best. It is 
well known that Miss Parks has taken more than a usual interest in her little 
cousin. — Oregon Daily. 



124 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

menstruation is irregular, very slight and unsatisfactory. These 
patients never know when they will be unwell. Quite a per- 
centage lack development. The womb remains infantile; they are 
not inclined to have much bust development, and many have none 
at all. And if they get married, many are sterile. These patients 
are not remarkable for large appetites. They are more inclined 
to pick over food than to eat it. They are subject to headaches, 
neuralgia and nervousness. Their nutrition is usually very poor, 
and they are usually under- weight. If much mental trouble comes 
to them, they get more and more nervous, lose weight — get thinner 
and thinner — and many of them die from starvation in the midst 
of plenty. 

Treatment: Those of the first class should be put on a very 
restricted diet and kept from all excitement. They should bathe 
daily; take excellent care of the skin; sleep as near out of doors 
as possible; and they must be kept away from the society of those 
who have a bad influence over them. They should be induced to 
read good literature ; avoid love stories ; and they should be put to 
bed at night by ten o'clock, and allowed to sleep as long as they 
can. They must be occupied. Idleness with those suffering from 
such pelvic disorders will aggravate their condition. Everything 
must be done to bring about contentment. Plain food and high 
thinking are two necessary remedies. 

The second class need building up; they need plenty of 
good, nourishing food, provided it is eaten under the right condi- 
tions; and the right conditions are mental and physical poise. 
Mental worries must be gotten rid of; they must be taught how 
to be optimistic, hopeful and happy. Inasmuch as they are very 
easily worn out, such patients should not be allowed to go to 



KINDNESS AND FIRMNESS. 125 

theaters, or places of amusement or excitement, at night. Such 
care for a year or two should be followed by good health, if 
proper hygienic and dietetic habits are practiced while living a 
retired life. 

Both of these classes of patients are inclined to be hysterical, 
and those who are about them should have a great deal of pa- 
tience. I don't believe in indulgence, but I believe in kindness 
and firmness. People who have no self-control are made stronger 
if those about them will govern them in a kind way. It is not 
an uncommon thing for both of those classes of patients to be 
subjected to surgical operations. There is no excuse for it, and 
it is one of the heinous crimes of the age; but so long as people 
will submit to such treatment, there will be so-called surgeons 
ready to do the work. 

Cancer of the Breast. — I am often consulted by those who are 
troubled with ' 'lumps' ' in the breast, and without an exception I 
find, on examination, more or less disease of the womb, which, when 
corrected, will cause the glandular enlargement of the breasts to 
disappear. 

I frequently am asked to examine a remaining breast to see 
if "the cancer is returning," on breast having been removed be- 
cause of an alleged cancer. I tell the patient that the enlarge- 
ment is simply enlarged glands, due to deranged general health 
and disease of the womb. 

Victims of unnecessary operations are hard to convince that 
a second operation is unnecessary, for, they declare, "This en- 
largement is just like the other." Doubt and fear will be enter- 
tained by these operation-cursed people until I prove my state- 
ments by causing the enlargement to disappear. 



126 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

When bad habits of living have been continued until nerve 
energy is reduced to such an extent that elimination fails, and 
nutrition is brought to a low ebb, then we should not be surprised 
to find any induration of tissue or glands in the breasts taking on 
malignancy. 

When enlarged glands, and indurations of any kind, cannot 
be removed by correcting the general health, and the local diseases 
that play the role of furnishing reflex irritations, they should be 
removed; but if deranging habits of body and mind are corrected 
before cancer develops, there will be no danger of its developing. 

To cure cancer of the breast is doubtful, for the same condi- 
tions are to be met that have to be met and corrected in cancer 
of any other part of the body. 

When amputation of the breast is not followed by a return 
of the disease, it is safe to say that the removed breast was not 
cancerous. 

Prevention is the only safe and sure cure for cancer of any 
part of the body. 

Treatment of Cancer of the Breast: The same general rules 
that I have gone over in writing of cancer of the womb apply to 
cancer of the breast. 

Inasmuch as there is a close relationship between the breasts 
and the reproductive organs, ovarian diseases and uterine diseases 
must be studied in connection with the diseases of the mammary 
glands. 

It is quite common for the breasts to be sensitive during the 
menstruation; many complain of swelling and tenderness, and 
sometimes a feverish state of the breasts. 



LUMPS IN THE BREAST. 127 

Many women are troubled with lumps in their breasts. When 
the glands stay enlarged, it is quite positive evidence that there 
exists an ovarian or uterine derangement. I do not mean an or- 
ganic disease of the ovaries, but a hypersensitive condition, due to 
causes I have described in writing of those diseases. 



CHAPTER XI. 



Pruritus of the Vulva. 




" RURITUS is a neurosis of the skin, producing a 
j disagreeable itching and burning of the genitals. 
It is at first relieved by rubbing or scratching, but 
later this relief is only temporary, and the friction 
caused by scratching increases the trouble until 
life is made intolerable. The itching, tickling, 
sharp stinging and burning becomes so constant that the patient is 
debarred from going out among her friends. In some instances the 
patient suffers more at night, and the sleep is so disturbed that she is 
driven to taking drugs to procure sleep. 

When examined, these patients show no local signs of the dis- 
turbance except what is produced by rubbing and scratching. 

Causation: The causes of pruritus are many. Parasites or 
germs are given by medical authority as one of the principal causes. 
If parasites are the cause, they can be discovered, and the free use 
of lemon juice, locally applied, will soon kill them off. Carbolic- 
acid solution and mercurial ointment are the principal remedies used 
by drug advocates, or a solution of bichloride of mercury; but I 
find pure lemon juice quite sufficient. 

Pruritus caused by other derangements is not so easily cured 
as when caused by parasites, for the cause is often obscure, 

Where the cause is chronic inflammation of the womb, of 
course the womb disease must be cured. 



CLEANLINESS NECESSARY. 129 

Leucorrhea is a cause of itching, but as leucorrhea is itself 
only a symptom of other diseases, the cause of the leucorrhea must 
be discovered and cured ; then both pruritus and leucorrhea will be 
cured. 

Diabetic urine is said to be a cause. When it is, much care 
is necessary to keep the urine washed off. After each urination the 
parts must be washed with warm water, using a soft cloth. 

Treatment: My treatment is always directed to the correct- 
ing of nutrition. Patients suffering with this disease are invariably 
troubled with digestive disturbances; their urine is too acid. The 
acid coming from the fermentation of an excess of starch intake 
keeps them nervous, and if they do not have neuralgia or rheuma- 
tism they may have pruritus; this being true, drug doctors should 
succeed in palliating by administering their alkaline treatment for 
rheumatism. 

Itching and leucorrhea are often caused from a lack of clean- 
liness. Women should make a practice of using a soft cloth and 
warm water to sponge off the vulva after every urination, and as 
often as twice a day they should wash with soap and hot water, 
being careful to make the washings thorough, and follow the soap 
and warm water with cold-water sponging. 

I do not approve of the universal use made of vaginal 
douches. After menstruation, and when there is a discharge, the 
douches should be used; but if local washings are made as often as 
I have suggested, leucorrhea will not be so common as it is now. 

In addition to local cleanliness, I limit bread-eating to once a 
day, and proscribe potatoes, dry beans and peas. 

Breakfast in summer can be fruit or melons; in the winter, 
baked apples or prunes and a glass of milk, or hot water and milk. 



130 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

Lunch in summer can be clabber- or buttermilk; toasted bread 
and butter, or plain cake and ice cream ; egg custard may be used 
in place of milk, or the milk and custard can be eaten, leaving out 
the other foods ; in the winter, toasted bread and butter, and vege- 
table soup made without meat or meat stock. 

Dinners in the summer can be of cooked vegetables and salad ; 
eggs, fish, chicken or lamb may be added every other day. In the 
winter, meat or nuts every day, with cooked and raw vegetables. 

If the patient is very nervous, the tongue coated, and she is 
troubled much with wakefulness, she should either be fasted until 
the symptoms are all better, or her eating should be confined to 
fruit, melons and clabber-milk in summer, and prunes, baked apples 
and buttermilk in winter. Only one of these foods at a meal until 
the disease is fully controlled; then eat as suggested, always being 
careful never to overeat. 

The surface of the body must receive careful attention. A 
cold sponge-bath daily, followed with dry towel-rubbing, and the 
rubbings followed with exercise. Light-weight underwear should 
be worn the year around; wool should never be worn next to the 
skin. 

The mind must be free from annoyances. Jealousy, envy, 
spite, hate, revenge — one and all must be put out of the life; for 
health cannot be had when the mind is not at rest. Domestic dis- 
content will prevent recovery. Sexual abuse will stand in the way 
of becoming normal in mind and body. 

Perhaps, if I do not proscribe coffee and tea, the habit of 
taking these beverages will not be given up. Coffee, tea, alcoholics 
and tobacco must not be used. 



HUSBANDS WANT WIVES CURED. 131 

PAINFUL COITUS. 

Hyperesthesia of the Vulva. — A highly sensitive state of the 
genitals is not a common disease, yet it is found in many women 
who are so-called neurasthenics, or who are in line for building this 
state of the nervous system. 

I do not remember of ever seeing a marked case in any except 
young married women of the sterile class. No doubt the disease 
exists in unmarried women, but its existence is not known for ob- 
vious reasons. 

Husbands of wives afflicted in this way are anxious to have 
them cured, for marital rights in severe cases are inhibited much of 
the time. 

In extreme cases the sensitiveness of the urethra and the mouth 
of the vagina is so great that the patients are given great pain when 
examined by physicians, and if the clitoris be accidentally touched, 
the patient experiences exquisite pain. Even the rubbing of the 
clothing cannot be tolerated. 

Wives afflicted in this way become morose. They brood over 
the fact that they differ from other women, and that the more medi- 
cal advice they buy the worse they get, until they become discour- 
aged and lapse into a state of morbid indifference. They are care- 
less of their homes ; careless of their personal appearance ; they be- 
come sour, sullen and indifferent. If asked why they take no in- 
terest in life and appear to hate everybody, including themselves, 
their answers are in keeping with their manner, namely: "Why 
should I? What's the difference?" They hate themselves, and 
they believe that their friends are no longer interested in them ; they 
lose their power of right reasoning. They will not permit their 



132 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

friends to show interest ; even father and mother are treated indiffer- 
ently or with mild contempt. 

If there is a sexual neurosis as a complication or as an initia- 
tory cause, lascivious thoughts and self-abuse add to the local sensi- 
tiveness and general enervation, until sanity is lost in a hopeless 
melancholia. 

The dyspareunia* is not understood by the husband, and he 
adds to his wife's burden (for she does not understand any more 
than he does) by declaring that she does not love him; and too 
often he attempts to coerce her into ignoring her affliction by threats 
of infidelity. This brutality only adds intensity to her suffering by 
making her still more sensitive. 

If such a brutal husband carries out his threat and afterwards 
infects her with venereal disease, her suffering will be added to, if 
possible; and then, if tortured by the prevailing treatment, the poor 
woman may be driven to self-destruction to get away from her hell. 

Not infrequently the origin of this neurotic disease is in a 
gonorrheal infection which leaves the urethra hyper-sensitive as well 
as the genitals. 

Treatment: The first thing to do is to set the mind right by 
explaining the disease to the patient and her husband, and securing, 
if possible, a good understanding between them. She must under- 
stand that her mental attitude of pessimism must be overcome by 
using her will in exactly the opposite direction from her inclination ; 
that she must not give way to her inclinations; that she must do 
something every day that she really does not want to do. 

*Dyspareunia: painful or difficult copulation from physical incompati- 
bility. 



PARALYSIS OF WILL. 133 

I tell these patients that they have lost their will-power; that 
they have paralysis of will; at which statement they take offense 
and declare that no one has ever accused them of lacking will- 
power before. They really believe that they exhibit will-power in 
treating their friends with indifference, and in behaving in a sullen, 
austere and ill-humored manner; but I add "insult to injury" by 
declaring that what they pride themselves on doing, as evidence of 
a strong will, is nothing more than a display of impotency; that 
they are going in the line of least resistance; that what they do is 
what they want to do; and I then clinch the argument by saying 
that there is but one way to show will-power, and that is to do what 
is right and proper to do, in spite of an overwhelming impulse to do 
the opposite. Then I show them that their whole desire is to act 
on impulse, and their impulses are morbid, for they are caused by 
their disease. 

These patients must be controlled and encouraged in doing 
something for themselves by practicing self-control. 

If there is inflammation, it must receive first attention. All 
granular or inflamed points may be touched with carbolic acid, 
using a pointed match or toothpick ; care should be taken not to get 
the acid on parts not needing it. An olive-tipped sound may be 
used to rub the granulations out of the urethra. The size of the 
sound should not be larger, to begin with, than No. 24, French 
measurement, and after the sensitiveness is overcome, a larger sound, 
selecting one from 26 to 34. The rubbing should be gentle and 
continued for only one or two minutes every other day. 

Eating must be light ; the first few days no food, except water 
as often as desired ; after the third day, prunes for breakfast, melons 



134 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

or clabber-milk for lunch, and vegetable soup and cooked vegeta- 
bles for the evening meal. One hot cleansing bath each week, 
taken just before going to bed at night, and a cold-water sponge- 
bath every morning. 

Exercise should be taken every day both in the house and out 
in the air. 

The disease must be fully controlled before full eating is re- 
sumed, and then bread should not be eaten oftener than once every 
day, and that at luncheon ; and meat not more than once a day, and 
that at dinner. To give a general outline, the eating should be 
fruit at one meal, bread at the next, and meat and vegetables for 
the third meal. 

These patients must always be careful about overeating on 
starch, sugar and fats. 

I could go into much detail in giving my treatment of this 
disease, but it is not necessary for physicians, and, so far as pa- 
tients are concerned, they cannot cure themselves; they require the 
most skilled physician they can get, and then, if the physician is 
unable to control them, he will fail to make a cure. 

VAGINITIS. 

Inflammation of the vagina may be simple, brought on from 
sexual abuse or from using douches made irritating by drugs, or 
the inflammation may be specific or gonorrheal. 

Symptoms: The symptoms are a feeling of heat and full- 
ness ; there will be pain in the vagina and uterus ; a dragging feel- 
ing in the loin. Leucorrhea, ranging all the way from a thin 
watering to a thick catarrhal or white-of-egg discharge. The lat- 
ter indicates inflammation of the neck or body of the womb, or 



* CRIMINAL ABORTION. 1 35 

both. When the leucorrhea takes on a purulent state, it becomes 
yellowish or brownish to bloody in color. 

When women are careless in eating, bathing and clothing 
themselves, they will evolve a state of blood and nervous system 
that takes on local inflammation easily; their resistance is low, 
and injuries at childbirth inflame and ulcerate instead of healing 
in a normal manner. It is this class of women who swell the 
death-rate in abortions, miscarriages and childbirth. 

When criminal abortion is performed on women who are 
dirty in body and mind, a large per cent, will die unless saved by 
the vigilance of the nurse; when the nurse is careless, septic fever 
is almost sure to set in and destroy the patient. 

Physical uncleanliness stands at the top of all causes that 
bring on diseases of women. 

Text-books give the eruptive diseases as an unusual cause of 
vaginitis. It is probable, for the eruptive diseases are purely skin 
diseases, and a disease of the skin in one part of the body will 
excite the sympathy of the skin in other parts of the body. 

Treatment: The treatment for vaginitis must be the same as 
for inflammations in any other part of the body; namely, either 
fast for the first week, or at most take a little fruit that is not too 
acid; drink three or four pints of water each day; use from two 
to four quarts of hot water as a douche morning and night, and 
enough local washings, using warm water and a soft cloth, to keep 
all discharges washed away. 

Cleanliness is the all-important remedy in all diseases, but 
especially is this true in diseases accompanied with discharges. 



1.36 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

I shall not give my treatment for gonorrhea, for I have gone 
into that subject very extensively in my book on "Gonorrhea and 
Syphilis."* 



*My book "Gonorrhea and Syphilis" everyone should read, for it is 
revolutionary and should be an epoch-maker. Perhaps the most original work 
of the kind ever brought out. 



CHAPTER XII. 



Varicose Veins. 




NLARGED VEINS. — Many women are 
troubled with varicose veins of the legs. So 
great is this affliction with many mothers that it 
is thought to be a disease peculiar to women, 
and especially women who have borne chil- 
dren; but this is not true, for many men are 
troubled with the disease. 

Pregnancy or the carrying of children is given as one of the 
causes, but it is a libel on creation. Nature sets no penalty on 
women for being mothers; indeed, when women take on mother- 
hood in the right spirit and intelligently, they then, and not before, 
develop into full maturity. The rightly-cared-for women are not 
at their best as wives, companions and mothers until they are forty 
years old; from forty to fifty years of age women should be in 
their prime, and why are they, many of them, broken down? Be- 
cause few realize that the conventional life of our people today is 
fearfully destructive to health, and ages the people rapidly — and 
none faster than mothers. 

The strain on mothers is great; they are expected, with rare 
exceptions, to have the responsibility of the house, and too often the 
work of the home, until the day of confinement; and then they are 
expected to get out of bed and get back to work as soon as possi- 
ble ; administer to children day and night, sick or well ; and, neither 



138 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

last nor least, cater to the husbands' sensual pleasures. With all 
this burden, is there anything strange in the fact that a healthy, 
normal mother is hard to find? Add to this the burden of her 
own ignorance in eating and caring for her own mind and body, 
and, on top of this still, the abominable treatment received from the 
medical profession — the surgery she is subjected to — and there 
cannot be surprise at the fact that many die and many more are in 
the scrap-pile before forty years of age. 

One of the diseases that help to make a mother's life miser- 
able is varicose veins. The veins of the legs swell to a great size, 
often to half the size of a man's wrist, and the leg or legs from 
the feet to the body not infrequently swell to double the natural 
size. 

When the swelling is great the suffering is great. The veins 
appear knotted and frequently break, and in extreme cases ulcers 
form on the shins or above the ankles. 

The cause is enervation. Is there any wonder that mothers 
are enervated? Indeed, resistance is low, and this state cannot 
exist without bringing on imperfect elimination. Add to this the 
constant absorption of intestinal toxines from indigestion brought 
on from overeating and improper eating, and the reader has a 
picture of many of the causes of varicose veins. 

Intra-abdominal pressure from a gravid uterus, or the accu- 
mulation of fat, or gas from indigestion, is a common mechanical 
cause; but the chief cause is intestinal auto-infection from overeat- 
ing. It should not be forgotten that the greater the load of care 
and responsibility, the greater the enervation; and the greater the 
enervation, the easier it is to overeat. Contrary to the profession's 
constant injunction to "eat," I say: Do not eat more than you have 
nerve energy to take care of ; for if you do, you must suffer. The 



THE BODY A MACHINE. 139 

profession has fallen into the untenable belief that the body is a 
machine that has the power to care for a given amount of fuel 
under any and all circumstances ; but the truth is that food can be 
taken care of or not, just in proportion to the amount of nerve 
energy possessed. Those possessing full energy may eat all neces- 
sary to supply the needs ; but, when enervated, the amount must be 
cut down to agree with ability to digest and assimilate, and if this 
law is not respected, disease is sure to be built; and one of the 
diseases that follow in the wake of overeating is the one under con- 
sideration. 

Treatment: The conventional treatment is to put on a band- 
age or silk-rubber stocking and call the disease well treated. Such 
treatment is a miserable, lazy makeshift that cannot do more than 
palliate. Another shameful, inexcusable medical blunder that is 
called a radical cure is to remove the veins by cutting them out. 
What is the outcome of this radical cure? Within a year or two 
other veins are enlarged to equal those taken out, and why not? 
The cause has not been removed — and, worse yet, not even sus- 
pected. There is but one cure, and that is to remove the cause. 
The general health must be restored by proper feeding and care of 
the body. All nerve-leaks are to be gotten rid of. What are they? 
Haven't I gone over them? Everything that is enervating in the 
woman's life must be corrected; if jealousy is the principal cause, 
there can be no cure until this depressing influence is put out of the 
life. Must I go over every cause of enervation, single it out and 
say remove it, or be accused, by some pin-headed reader, of not 
being specific enough in my instructions? Must I tell such people 
just how many ounces of food to eat to correct indigestion? Nc 
two cases are alike; hence, what is suitable for one is not suitable 



140 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

for another — except: If you feel badly, do not eat, and when 
you eat, do not eat enough to cause ill feelings. 

For a severe case eating should be suspended until fully re- 
lieved; then eat moderately, leaving meat off entirely and living on 
fruit and vegetables — no potatoes. Do not expect to get any ex- 
cept palliative relief very soon after adopting my treatment; for a 
right life must be followed for at least three years to secure a full 
cure, and then a reverting to old habits of life will soon cause the 
disease to return. Good health and a comfortable life for such 
people means the adoption of correct habits and staying with them 
for life. 

NERVOUSNESS. 

Who does not know what it is to be nervous? Everyone 
knows what nervousness means, yet few really know that nervous 
people must be divided into two classes; namely, those who have 
irritable nerves and those who have weak nerves. A good division 
would be that of Irritation and Depression; or perhaps I might 
divide these patients into those suffering with Nervous Irritation 
and those with Nervous Depression. 

NERVOUS IRRITATION. 
This class of people we have around and about us all the 
time. We meet them everywhere, and a home that has not one or 
more in it is rare and hard to find. They are known by many 
names. A gentle, loving wife will refer to her husband, who is 
suffering from nervous irritation, as: "My husband is very nerv- 
ous." A wife who is not so gentle and loving refers to her spouse 
as: "My husband has a very ugly disposition; he takes it from his 
mother." When both husband and wife are afflicted, she may 
declare that he is unkind and has no consideration, or in extreme 



REVENGE FANCIED OFFENSES. 141 

cases she may declare that he is a brute, or a fiend; and he may 
refer to her as a very nervous woman, or very disagreeable, or a 
shrew, and in extreme cases, where there is a little jealousy mixed 
in, he may decide that she is a hell-cat. 

The possible types on both sides are infinite, and to describe 
the symptoms would be to describe the lives of men and women 
suffering from this disease, from their first little unpleasantness as 
lovers to the divoice courts, and from there, only too often, to a 
suicide's or homicide's grave. 

To trace the disease through another channel would be to 
start with a girl who becomes irritable at the corrections of parents 
and teachers, or who shows impatience at tr-vial differences with 
her associates, or becomes hysterical at not having her own way, 
and seeks to revenge fancied offenses by doing imprudent acts. From 
this state, too many lose self-respect and in a fit of desperation 
mount the toboggan route to hell; and at what particular station 
they get off does not matter, for any one of them means a ruined 
life. Young men start much the same, and their lives are filled 
with crime and punishment to the end. 

My extreme description — the worst types — fits only those 
who unfortunately are born moral idiots, A moral idiot is one 
in whom a sense of right and wrong fails to develop. This sense 
is found in varying degree, ranging from nil to full development. 
Those who have full development are as incapable of having sym- 
pathy for their antipodes as the latter — the moral idiots — are in- 
capable of sympathizing with them. The two extremes are ab- 
normal, and both are enemies to society — as much so as are the 
two extremes in acquisitiveness. On the one hand are those who 
have power to possess the earth, and on the other are those whose 



142 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

sense of acquiring is idiotic. Social turmoil is kicked up by these 
two extremes, and it is all that the sane middle class can do to keep 
the idiots and insane from making earth unendurable. Please un- 
derstand that sanity means well-balanced faculties. Where there 
is no development it means idiocy, and where development is ex- 
cessive it means insanity. 

When these extreme types are enervated by overstimulation 
from either gluttony, drunkenness, sexual excess, overwork, too 
much pleasure or unrestrained emotions, they are hard to repress; 
it is then that they desire to get at each other's throats. Please 
don't imagine that these people look different from the average 
person. 

As sociology is not my subject, I shall go no farther than to 
say that when the world's social diseases are cured it will be after 
the masses are cured of their insanity brought on from enervation, 
and just after that is accomplished the millennium will be here. 

Nervous irritation shows itself in fault-finding, and there are 
always functional disturbances of the sexual organs. Painful men- 
struation is common; headaches are common; or there may not be 
pain of a decided character, but these patients will feel a tense, 
drawn feeling, and they frequently describe their feelings as being 
unable to keep still, yet too weak to take any comfort in exercise. 
I have had such people declare that they feel like screaming ; that 
they hold on to themselves at times until they feel like flying or 
going all to pieces; that if they cannot get relief they will surely 
do something desperate. 

Others will be depressed and quarrelsome, finding fault with 
everybody; or they are inclined to believe themselves the cause of 
all their troubles ; they are emotional without being able to give any 



UNSELFISH PHYSICIANS. 143 

reason, and in this way distress friends who are at a loss to know 
why they are so unhappy. 

Actions are largely a question of disposition; those naturally 
ill-tempered will find fault with anyone except themselves, and 
those who are kind and gentle find fault with themselves. 

INTROSPECTION. 

Those who are inclined to introspect have their bodies under 
continual investigation. 

It is necessary to think about the body enough to supply its 
wants, but such thinking does not need to monopolize the mind to 
the exclusion of everything else. This is the class of women who are 
abused by commercialized medical men. If they are the wives of 
men who have means, their weaknesses are taken advantage of, and 
they are made to believe they have some serious bodily derange- 
ment that requires much medical attention, or possibly surgical 
operations. If they are not able to pay large fees, the doctors 
who do not need experience will give them a prescription they can- 
not afford — something like a change of climate or a sea voyage; 
and this drives them to a cheaper class of professional men — doc- 
tors who need experience. Under the care of this class they get 
operations without money and without price. This latter class 
is willing to live a few years on glory. The pay will be in 
having themselves talked about — being pointed out as good, kind, 
and friends of the poor. Their patients refer to them as unselfish, 
noble, unsordid. "He certainly had no motive in operating upon 
me, for I could not pay him enough to recompense him for the time 
he so generously gave to me." 

There is a sufficiently large crop of unemployed physicians 
to keep the people who are unable to pay emasculated, while those 



144 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

who have money will certainly not go unattended, for fat fees at- 
tract those who have not time to dance attendance for glory. 

HYSTERIA. 

The name "hysteria" is given to those who suffer functional 
derangements. I do not believe there is any good reason for sin- 
gling out a class of nervous women to be known as hysterics; for 
there is a hysterical element in nervous disorders, and the same 
great cause underlies all — namely, enervation. Perhaps the hys- 
teric has less of self-discipline and is more inclined to be dissatisfied 
with her environment. Such women are inclined to see more to 
enjoy in other women's lives than in their own, and too frequently 
in other women's husbands. Where there is a pronounced sexual 
development they rather enjoy the novelty of divorce courts and 
frequent marriages. They tire of the monopoly of one man, and 
enjoy giving him freedom if in doing so it buys freedom for them- 
selves. This type of hysterics cannot be said to be invalids, unless 
it is necessary to be sick to secure the freedom wanted. If a trip 
is desired, and there is no way to get it except on a physician's pre- 
scription, they can get up the sickness all right, and it is surprising 
what a splendid imitation they can produce ; indeed, I have known 
operations to be performed where such an extreme w r as necessary 
to attain an end. 

These people succeed in fooling everybody, including them- 
selves. 

A cure is doubtful; for this type of derangement belongs to 
criminality and requires discipline, and there are no institutions for 
this class, unless a crime is committed that is punishable. 

There is a type of hysterics who are sufficiently enervated to 
put them in the class referred to as nervous; either the irritable or 



HYSTERIA. 1 45 

depressed class. They make pronounced types of either of these 
classes, and differ from either in the tendency to humbug friends. 
The hysteric have a strong desire to have those about them see 
everything as they see it — not that they contend in argument, but 
they persist in acting in a way to force people to their point of 
view, and will resort to chicanery, and are so clever that it takes an 
expert to detect their humbuggery. This state is truly a disease; 
it is a form of mental disease, and requires discipline, both mental 
and physical. The more bodily derangement, the worse the mind 
is perverted. Many think that hysteria is confined to women; this 
is a mistake; almost as many men have the disease as women, and 
they are as hard to cure and require as severe discipline. There 
is always a lack of self-discipline, and frequently a morbid egotism. 
Pronounced types may truly be called egomaniacs. 

NEURASTHENIA. 

Neurasthenia is an exhausted nervous system. The best 
writers say that it is due to malnutrition. It appears to me that ex- 
hausted nerves are the cause of the malnutrition ; for unless there is 
nerve energy, digestion will be imperfect. 

Nerve irritation and nerve depression, that have been de- 
scribed before, may be thought of as the early symptoms of neu- 
rasthenia. 

To recognize neurasthenia as a special type of disease is a 
mistake, for it is not; it is a symptom of a constitutional derange- 
ment, and the derangement may be the expression of many dis- 
eases. Any disease that exhausts the nerve energy will be accom- 
panied with symptoms peculiar to neurasthenia — if I may be 
pardoned for jumbling words; for I might as well say that ex- 
hausted nerve energy produces exhausted nerve energy. 



146 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

Those who develop into real types of neurasthenics are the 
children of parents who failed to impart to them a stable nervous 
system; in other words, they are children of parents who lived the 
pace that exhausted their nerve energies so that they could not im- 
part to their children enough vitality to meet the vicissitudes of life 
with adequate resistance. Such children use up their small stock 
of energy by the time they finish school, and then settle down to a 
life of invalidism; many die in infancy and during their school 
years. Such children should not be sent to school; they should be 
kept in the open and allowed to find "tongues in trees, books in 
the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." I 
doubt if civilization has improved on nature's plan of education 
enough to persist in building the neurasthenic temperament by hous- 
ing children on the pretext of educating them. We have a lot of 
questionable educating. 

A lack of concentration is one symptom; also a lack of 
memory. Where concentration is finally secured there is lost power 
to divert, and when the diversion is forced the mind will not lay 
hold of the diversion, but appear dazed and unable to lay hold of 
any new subject. Dreaming is often mistaken for concentration. 
Inability to shift the mind at command is not an indication of 
power; it means mental impotency, and unless corrected will lead 
to disintegration of the nerve centers. A really healthy, disci- 
plined mind is one that can be instantly concentrated, and as in- 
stantly broken away from a subject in mind to take another. A 
mind that cannot do this needs exercise, and if it is not given exer- 
cise by changing subjects frequently, it will certainly degenerate. 

The neurasthenic complains of unpleasant feelings in the 
head — not amounting to pain, yet enough to draw the attention; 
and the feeling is often exaggerated by thinking about it. These 



EYE-STRAIN. 147 

patients are inclined to introspect, and where the habit is developed 
it causes depression. Complaint is made that brain-work causes a 
feelings of fullness in the head. 

Dizziness is another symptom that frequently points to func- 
tional derangement of the stomach, bowels or liver. 

Defective vision is a symptom that will pass away when the 
general systemic state is improved; when there is cataract forming, 
its progress can be held in check by proscribing the foods that carry 
into the system too much mineral; and the consumption of table 
salt should be very small. 

A few years ago there was a type of medical craze that de- 
clared that nearly all nervous symptoms were due to eye-strain 
from myopia, presbyopia, or some other eye defect. 

Hearing is sometimes acute — so much so that noises disturb; 
many complain of noises in the ears, such as ringing or that made 
by insects. 

Timidity is one of the most pronounced symptoms. Patients 
are often made very unhappy by apprehensions — a fear of every- 
thing. They have no pleasure in recreating, for they are looking 
for trouble. 

These patients are poor sleepers; sleep is never refreshing. 
There are a few who have difficulty in going to sleep, and are then 
hard to awaken and do not want to get up of a morning. 

These patients tire easily and dislike exercise; they stumble 
and are inclined to drop anything held in the hand. 

A few blush so easily they embarrass themselves; hands and 
feet are usually cold and clammy, showing disturbed circulation 
and often a weak heart; sweating often follows exertion, and many 
ruin their dresses by sweating under the arms. 



148 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

These people have every symptom that can be named, or 
belongs to indigestion. The appetite is variable and abnormal — 
sometimes none, and again craving and hard to satisfy. 

These patients are treated by physicians of small experience 
for every disease to which flesh is heir. 

Causation: Anything that exhausts the nerve energy is a 
cause. Venereal excess, preventing conception and criminal abor- 
tions are a few of the most pronounced exciting causes. However, 
there cannot be any cause that works mischief more and oftener 
than errors in diet; for it is to this cause that abnormal appetites 
are due. Venereal excess is under the control of the diet; impru- 
dent eating and overeating builds passion; and it matters not what 
treatment is given — if eating is not corrected, no good will be ex- 
perienced. 

Treatment: The best authorities agree that nutrition is to be 
looked after above everything else in the line of treatment, and then 
they proceed to enumerate all kinds of drugs, from asafcetida and 
valerian — the treatment of forty years ago — to the rest and "good 
nourishing food" of today, aided with bromides. "Bless the man 
who invented the bromides." This quotation calls out a hearty 
amen! from hosts of M. D.'s. 

"The tendency among the best physicians is to avoid drugs," 
Osier declares; and: "Treatment by drugs should be avoided as 
much as possible. A placebo is sometimes necessary for its psychic 
effect. Alcohol, morphine, chloral or cocaine should never be 
given. The family physician is often responsible for the develop- 
ment of a drug habit. I have been frequently shocked by the 
loose, careless way in which physicians inject morphine for a simple 
headache or a mild neuralgia. General tonics may be helpful, 



EVERY CASE A LAW UNTO ITSELF. 149 

especially if the individual be anemic. Arsenic and more often 
iron are then indicated." 

He recommends the bromides, and occasional doses of "phen- 
acetin, antipyrine or salipyrine may be required, but the less of 
these substances we can get along with the better." 

There can be no set plan of treatment, for every case is a 
law unto itself. When the circulation is bad, a short hot-water 
bath of from three to five minutes' duration, followed by a quick 
cold-water sponge-bath and a dry towel-rubbing, should be taken 
every morning; light to medium-weight cotton or linen underwear 
should be worn throughout the year; as much exercise should be 
taken every day as can be without great fatigue. If the bowels 
are constipated, two glasses of warm or cold water should be taken 
before breakfast every morning, and one glassful a half-hour before 
the other meals. 

Two cupfuls of hot water may be sipped immediately follow- 
ing each meal, or what is known as cambric tea. 

The general plan of eating should be: fruit for breakfast; 
vegetable soup for lunch, and toasted biscuit-bread and butter ; and 
cooked vegetables — any except potatoes, dry beans and peas — for 
dinner. Where there is sufficient digestion to justify, the bread 
and butter may be used with the soup for lunch, and meat, eggs 
or fish can be used with the vegetables for dinner. When the bow- 
els are not constipated, a salad may be used with each dinner. 

These patients need to learn their food limitations, and every 
other limitation, and respect them; if they will not, they need not 
expect to get well. 

A cure really means education out of hundreds of little bad 
habits — little habits that "do not amount to anything." Yet the 
individual is broken down in health, and it is safe to declare that 



150 DISEASES OF WOMEN. 

these same "little nothings" have as much to do with keeping the 
disease in evidence as anything else. 

Some people will not ventilate their bedrooms until forced to 
do so, and then quit as soon as they are not watched and advised. 

The bad habit of giving way to the emotions must be con- 
trolled. Everything that causes nerve-waste must be controlled be- 
fore such cases can hope to regain health. 

The curing of disease means the discovery of cause and then 
the removal of it. It is nonsense to say there is no cause, or that 
the cause is long since past; for, after forty years of advising the 
sick, I know that all diseases will get well when their daily build- 
ing is stopped. 

DELAYED MAMMARY DEVELOPMENT. 
- There are young women who have no breast development. 
This delayed development is supposed to be retarded puberty ; if it 
is, marriage will hasten development. 

Treatment: I usually prescribe exercise daily, with massage 
and cold sponge-bathing. 

PREMATURE DEVELOPMENT. 
In some children there is unnatural irritation, and it should 
be discovered and corrected. The diet should be non-exciting. If 
self-abuse is the cause, or bad company — companions who poison 
the mind with talk on sexual subjects — the cause must be removed, 
and the eating of meat and rich foods must be inhibited. 

RETRACTED NIPPLES. 
These should be treated by removing pressure and, if neces- 
sary, using a cupping-glass once a day. 



LEAKING BREASTS. 151 

Fat girls often appear not to have nipples, or those they have 
very short, because of an undue amount of adipose tissue ; if neces- 
sary, the breasts may be cupped enough to elongate the nipple. 

Retracted nipples are caused from some injury in childhood 
or malformation, and will have to be treated according to the needs 
of each case. The family physician should be consulted, and he 
must do what appears to be necessary. 

Sensitive breasts need no special treatment. The eating habits 
must be looked after; and if there is ovarian or uterine irritation, it 
must be treated according to needs. 

DERANGED SECRETIONS. 

Unnatural secretion is caused by deranged health, and what- 
ever the derangement is, it must be sought out and corrected. 

Galactorrhea in those not nursing is rare, but there is such 
an anomaly occasionally; all such peculiarities must be treated in- 
dividually, or treated as appears to be necessary when presenting. 

This derangement occurring in nursing mothers indicates error 
in diet during the pregnancy as well as after, and will be treated 
at more length in my advice to prospective mothers. 



Easy Childbirth 



Easy Childbirth 



fjjp^ 5 """"^^^ T IS the right, privilege and duty of all normally 
built women to have an easy labor. 







Suffering unnecessary. — The suffering, in- 
jury and consequent ill-health that a large per 
cent, of women experience from childbirth is un- 
necessary and one of the greatest crimes that can 
be laid at the door of medical science. The great 
profession is morally responsible for much of lay ignorance on the 
subject of disease and health, but in nothing greater than in keeping 
the prospective mother ignorant of how she should live during the 
gestation period; for on her manner of life during that time depend 
easy labor, her future health and the health of the child. 

There is much ado these days about pure milk, clean dairies 
and care of children. The paid writers of the A. M. A. have been 
exceedingly busy in teaching the public conservation of health; all 
of which is proper and right; but the education is palliative, the 
same as most of the teachings of medical science. All this hurrah 
in health education is a case of locking the barn after the horse is 
stolen. 

The people should know as much as they can be taught on 
the necessity of feeding children pure milk, and everything needful 
in the line of avoiding sickness, and care after disease comes; but 
nine-tenths of diseases and deaths among children can be prevented 
by educating the mother how to bring forth normal children. 



156 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

A normal child cannot be born by an abnormal mother. Nerv- 
ousness in mothers will impart nervousness to children ; and it should 
be common knowledge that nervousness means enervation, and ener- 
vation means weakness or lessened resistance, and that this state is 
brought on by overstimulation. The inebriate brings it on by using 
alcoholics ; overeating, and the use of coffee and tea, bring it on the 
people generally and particularly mothers ; then add the many other 
enervating influences to which prospective mothers are subjected, 
and there cannot be any wonder that normal childbirth and lacta- 
tion are becoming extinct. 

WHY MOTHERS LOSE THEIR MILK. 

Abnormal mothers have severe labors; they are injured in 
childbirth; these injuries cause nerve and blood derangements, 
which cause them to lose their milk entirely, or derange the chemical 
constituents of it to such an extent as to ruin it as an ideal food for 
their children. 

There is but one proper food for children, for the first year of 
their lives, and that is the mother's milk; and all mothers can fur- 
nish good and sufficient milk for their children if they are willing to 
live as they should during their gestation period. 

The principal immunization from disease for children is 
healthy parents, and especially healthy mothers during the gestation 
period. 

EATING FOR TWO. 

There is a stupid notion, quite generally believed, that preg- 
nant mothers should eat enough for two; this results in indigestion; 
gluttonous mothers have much acidity of their stomachs; many re- 
sort to taking baking-soda, magnesia, charcoal or some other ant- 
acid; and, strange as it may appear, medical men prescribe such pal- 



ACIDITY OF STOMACH. 157 

liation instead of advising prospective mothers to avoid stuffing and 
eat within reason, if they would be comfortable. 

Sick stomach, sour stomach, burning in the stomach, heart 
palpitation, short breath, sore mouth, bloating of the bowels, un- 
sightly distention of the abdomen, the tired, languid feeling, swelling 
of the legs and feet, varicose veins, excessive weight of body and 
stupidity of mind, all come from "eating for two," which often 
means eating enough for a whole family. Such ignorance is inex- 
cusable and certainly a disgrace to the medical profession; for if 
medical men were not possessed of a like stupidity, the mothers of 
the world would know better. Why should average medical men 
not know that overeating by pregnant mothers is the cause of acid 
stomach? Why should medical men know no more than to believe 
that morning sickness, acid stomach, over-distention of the abdomen 
from the accumulation of gas, swelling of the feet and legs, and all 
the discomforts of pregnant women, including painful and difficult 
labors, the early drying-up of the milk, or the giving of no milk at 
all, and cross, irritable, sleepless and sick babies, are necessary af- 
flictions sent upon the mothers of the world ? 

CAUSE OF ACIDITY OF STOMACH. 

Just why any medical man cannot understand that acidity of 
the stomach means overeating, and that such a habit continued 
through the gestation period must end in an abnormal labor, I can- 
not conceive, unless there is something about the study and practice 
of medicine that nullifies common sense and reason. 

The mother instinct — the love of mother for her child — would 
not permit her to live in a manner to jeopardize the health and life 
of her child, if her stupid, medical ass knew enough to advise her. 
It appears impossible that laymen should not know those simple 



158 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

facts, but I presume that such lay-ignorance is the price civilization 
pays for being instructed by a select class — for delegating the right 
to think on individual and personal matters to an inspired or espec- 
ially educated class. The result has been, as it always must be, 
that when the affairs that concern the individual are neglected, or 
delegated to others to attend to, they will not be attended to, and 
the knowledge and ability to attend to them will be lost to those 
vitally concerned. Neglect self-development and it becomes a lost 
art; no amount of wisdom in others can save the mentally emascu- 
lated. Money cannot buy common sense when its development has 
been neglected. 

WHAT GLUTTONIZING LEADS TO. 

What does gluttonizing or overeating bring on the mother 
at the time of confinement? The labor may be forced on a week 
or two ahead of time because of gas pressure — gas distention will 
bring discomfort and bearing-down — and when labor is forced on 
before full relaxation of the neck of the womb has come about, the 
labor must be prolonged several hours beyond what it should be, 
and the risk of rupture to the soft parts is made much greater. 

Gluttony often causes an excessive distention of the womb 
from "waters" — distention from an excess of amniotic fluid — and 
where the membranes are thin and liable to rupture, premature 
labor is forced on from two weeks to three months in advance of the 
regular time. This unnecessary accident often robs young mothers, 
and old ones too, of the fruits of their womb. Where the mem- 
brane is unyielding, the woman frequently runs over time, and the 
labor is made unnecessarily long and fatiguing. 

Distention of the womb from too much fluid permits the fetus 
to tumble about and become entangled in the cord. Frequently the 



EXCESS WEIGHT. 159 

cord will be wrapped about the neck several times. The cord may 
be so shortened by being bound around the fetus as to seriously pro- 
long labor, and is often the cause of the child presenting wrong and 
causing complications requiring a very skilled physician to save the 
lives of mother and child. 

When the membrane is thin and ruptures prematurely, the 
child may be lost — killed from the severe contractions of the uterus ; 
the fluid is necessary to act as a cushion to prevent the expulsive 
contractions from beating the child to death. 

EXCESS WEIGHT. 

When the mother is encumbered with flesh, the child will be, 
unless the circulation through the cord is impeded by twists in it 
caused by the turning of the fetus. Partial obstruction to the fetal 
circulation from twisting of the cord interferes with the child's de- 
velopment, and the obstruction from this cause may be great enough 
to cause its death. These contingencies are remote, but occur often 
enough to be known and guarded against. 

Encumbered mothers must always be autotoxemic, hence more 
liable to be left with uterine catarrh ; and children of such mothers 
are often said to be born with catarrh. Inflammation and abscess 
of the breasts are more liable to develop in autotoxemic mothers 
than in others, and childbed fever will develop in these subjects 
more surely than in others. 

The reason that enervated and toxemic puerperal patients are 
more liable to infection is because their tissues are more relaxed, 
thickened, and disposed to obstruct drainage. Not infrequently a 
slight malposition favors the retention of discharges, and if this 
faulty drainage is not discovered and remedied at once, fatal infec- 
tion will surely follow. 



160 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

Women whose modes of living are such as to bring on uterine 
displacements — the wearing of close-fitting corsets, gas in bowels, 
accumulated fat — are liable to have trouble at child-birth ; all such 
prospective mothers should take care of themselves during gestation, 
so as to avoid such a contingency. 

If prospective mothers would have ideal children, they must 
live ideally from the beginning of pregnancy to its end. I do not 
mean by living ideally that the woman practice a mawkish senti- 
mentality and live objectively a life that she does not feel subjec- 
tively. A prospective mother should endeavor to keep sweet in mind 
and body, and this she cannot do if she is practicing enervating 
habits. Overeating is a common cause of overstimulation ; and my 
lay-reader should not forget that overstimulation always brings de- 
pression — weakened nerve energy — a state of the body physicians 
know as enervated. 

ENERVATION. 

Enervation can be brought on from overdoing in any way. 
Too much play as well as work is bad for prospective mothers. 
Doing the family washings and ironings is not a good thing for 
mother or child. Farmers know the evils that follow working their 
breeding animals, but few of them apply the knowledge to their 
wives and children. I have known quite intelligent stockmen to 
raise fine animals, but make miserable failures at raising children. 
When their stock miscarried or brought forth young that did not 
thrive, they knew the cause; but when their wives and children did 
not do well, they called physicians to treat them for diseases that 
could have been avoided if they had applied their knowledge of 
stock-raising to their families. 



MATRIMONIAL SLAVERY. 161 

Cholera infantum in children is known as "scours" in young 
animals; the stockmen know that overworking and fretting their 
mares during their gestation period causes "scours" in their colts; 
but they and many of their physicians, believe that the Nemesis, 
disease, has in some unaccountable way taken hold of their wives 
and children. Hot weather, bad water, flies and impure milk are 
the scapegoats to which all evils are charged. 

EVILS THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST. 

The stockman, as well as the humane society, would prosecute 
anyone ignorant and stupid enough to allow the males of any breed 
of animals to tease and excite sexually the pregnant females; but 
this health-destroying practice is permitted without a protest among 
human animals. 

The female of the lower animals may, and does, protest and 
protect herself, by fighting off her assailant; but no such right is 
vouchsafed to the wife and mother of the human race ; she is made 
the slave of the male by the Holy Bonds of Matrimony, and unless 
she submits to her husband, she will be looked upon as an unnatural 
wife. 

I have known the love of young wives for their husbands turn 
to hate, and have been asked to explain the change. It was simply 
a case of subconscious nature protecting itself. The wives were 
often distressed in mind, believing themselves unnatural, and strove 
to act and appear different from their feelings. They were intelli- 
gent enough to feel that possibly their mental attitude toward their 
husbands would cause their children to be turned against their 
fathers. 



162 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

Is there anything strange in the fact that there are so many 
children who have nothing in common with- — no real love and sym- 
pathy for — their fathers? 

It is no uncommon occurrence to have prospective mothers 
coerced into submission to this unnatural act by tacit or open threats 
of infidelity. Only the most stupidly ignorant can believe that no 
harm will follow such treatment. 

Miscarriages are not infrequent, caused by sexual abuse, and 
the abortion habit is sometimes built from this cause. 

Domestic quarreling is the legitimate outcome of sexual abuse 
during the gestation period, and sexual excess is the cause of nine- 
tenths of all domestic woes. 

THE CAUSE OF JEALOUSY. 

Jealousy is the ban of society, and its cause lies in sexual ex- 
cess. When the nervous system is enervated by excess in this line, 
one of the symptoms of this abuse is insane jealousy. 

Excessive eating builds an unnatural and excessive sexual de- 
sire, and woe to the unfortunate wife who gratifies it; for excessive 
gratification builds the brutal nature and transforms the erstwhile 
gentle, loving husband into a coarse brute — one who is kinder and 
more considerate of any other woman than he is of the one who 
gratifies his lust; his kindness, however, is only in the seeming, for 
in reality a sexual neurotic is the quintessence of selfishness. Such 
men have little regard for anyone except themselves. 

Enervation brought on by excessive venery brings its victims 
very close to the border-land of insanity; and when jealousy is ex- 
cited, look out for homicide, uxoricide and suicide ! 



CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. 163 

Young men who kill their sweethearts when the girls' parents 
object to marriage, or kill themselves when crossed in love, are 
driven insane by sexual abuse, and often of the nature of onanism. 

When marriage is consummated, if the wedded pair start life 
as they should and establish good, instead of bad, habits, they may 
expect health, fine children and prosperity. 

The majority of men are handicapped more or less, in making 
a success of life, by overindulging appetites and passions. Excess 
impairs the mind, leaving judgment bad, and renders the victim 
blind to opportunities. Those who get on well could get on better 
if they practiced more conservation of energy. 

Success cannot be summed up in dollars, for many miserable 
failures are aided by money. Wealth is a capricious goddess and 
does not always smile on the worthy. It is true, business principles 
should be applied in doing business, but business principles require 
clear minds in those who apply them, to get the best results. When 
fat paunches and lean pates succeed to wealth, look for graft or 
freaks of fortune to account for it. 

When wealth comes before wisdom, the rust of lust is liable 
to eat out the soul. Many viciously inclined men are made appar- 
ently decent from poverty, and, conversely, many men of gentle 
qualities are made vicious by enough wealth to veneer vice ; hence, 
the newly wedded wife should weigh all these possibilities and en- 
deavor to conduct her life in a way not to encourage her husband to 
make any of these mistakes. 

When a husband finds that his income is inadequate to meet 
the wife's ambitions, he may undertake to supply the demand in 
questionable business methods ; if a physician, he may resort to mal- 
practice, which in time will undermine his moral nature and break 



164 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

down the barriers of moral restraint; and then the wife will be 
made miserable in spite of the luxuries her husband has procured for 
her at the price of his manhood. This wreck of character can be 
made of men who are very loving, but who have not a strong hold 
on the worth of moral character. 

Probably two-thirds of all the crimes committed by married 
men are forced upon them because of a desire to do as well by their 
families as other men do. Wives should not act in a way to en- 
courage this desire on the part of their husbands. 

When men of weak wills overindulge their appetites and pas- 
sions for a few years, their moral natures will be broken down, and 
then they will be in line for any act that offers a selfish advan- 
tage. The wife and mother suffers most from the degeneration of 
husbands and sons. 

The medical profession is doing a vast amount of harm by its 
advocacy of: "People should eat all the appetite calls for;" "The 
well man is as liable to take on disease as the weak, broken-down 
or sick man;" "Disease comes from any cause other than from daily 
habits." So long as medical advisers do not know the cause of 
disease, and they, themselves, practice the habits that bring on dis- 
ease and early death, the people will be slow to believe in a rational 
prevention of disease. 

I have pointed out the common, everyday errors of life that 
lead prospective mothers into mental and physical derangements, 
and I cannot press upon them too strongly, the truth that if they 
desire easy labors and healthy, normal children, they must have 
healthy bodies and minds from the beginning of gestation to its end ; 
and then, if they would have "good babies," they must continue to 
practice a rational life during the nursing period. For that matter, 



MORNING SICKNESS. 165 

a mother must live a normal, natural life all the time, if she would 
do all she can to bring up her children right. She should be sec- 
onded in this matter by her husband. No father who is brutalized 
by bad habits is fit to take a hand in bringing up children. 

DISEASES COMMON TO PREGNANT WOMEN. 

Morning sickness is the most common disease ; it is not a nor- 
mal state; a well woman will not have morning sickness. It is 
partly due to deranged stomach from tight corsets, overeating or 
imprudent eating. Many of the worst types of morning sickness 
come from chronic inflammation of the neck of the womb. If the 
patient is dieted, and the womb is treated correctly by cupping 
away the surplus blood every other day until the engorged neck of 
the womb is normal, which will be known by it becoming soft and 
yielding, the sick stomach will pass away not to return. 

If this treatment is objectionable, hot-water douches may be 
used twice daily, as follows: Secure a bed-pan large enough to 
hold six or eight quarts of water; put two or three quarts of hot 
water in a fountain syringe, and have the patient lie on her back 
with her hips elevated and on the bed-pan ; hang the fountain about 
three feet above the body and introduce the vaginal tube as far into 
the vagina as it will go, then turn on the water ; when the vagina is 
full — which will be known by the water passing out — pinch the 
tube and prevent any further flow of water ; allow the water already 
in the vagina to remain for a minute or two, then lift the pressure 
from the tube and allow more hot water to pass in ; then, when the 
first water is displaced by the new, stop the flow again and wait a 
minute before passing more hot water in; proceed in this manner 
until the fountain is empty. If desired, a general hot bath can be 
taken once a day in place of the hot douche. Draw enough hot 



166 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

water in the bathtub to immerse the body ; the patient is then to get 
in the water and lie on her back ; then she may introduce two fingers 
into her vagina and separate them enough to allow the vagina to fill 
with hot water. This bath should be of twenty to thirty minutes' 
duration. The window and door of the bathroom should be wide- 
open to give plenty of fresh air, and if faintness appears, place a 
cloth wet in cold water to the head and allow her to sip frequently 
of cold water.* 

Hot douches or hot baths tend to overcome the irritation and 
inflammation of the neck of the womb. The baths will be mate- 
rially aided by fasting or confining the eating to a little fruit three 
times a day. No food other than fruit and water should be taken 
until morning sickness has gone for good. 

NERVOUSNESS. 

Pregnant women are often very nervous. A common cause 
is autotoxemia. All causes for nervousness must be discovered and 
removed. If there is jealousy or any other domestic unhappiness, 
it must be corrected if possible; if due to social responsibilities, the 
social life must be given up; if^ due to lack of sleep, the patient 
should be sent to bed for a week or two to become relaxed and 
poised ; if due to constipation, this must be overcome ; if due to any 
bodily irritations, the appropriate remedy must be applied ; if due to 
uterine disease, the foregoing advice will answer. The most fruitful 
cause of nervousness is overeating or imprudent eating. Coffee, tea, 
chocolate and cocoa must be given up, and no food taken except 
fruit until the nervousness is controlled; then fruit for breakfast; 



* Where there is kidney 6r heart disease the bath is not to be taken. Such 
cases should take advice from their family physician, before taking hot baths. 



HEART PALPITATION. 167 

vegetable soup* and not more than four ounces of toasted bread f 
and butter for lunch ; and for dinner, meat, fish, fowl, eggs or nuts, 
two cooked non-starchy vegetables, J and a salad, § and no desserts 
should be used. 

HEADACHE. 
When pregnant women are troubled with headache, it indi- 
cates that they are autotoxemic and must be treated the same as for 
nervousness. Positively no food when the headaches are threaten- 
ing or while they are on. If subject to headaches, no food should 
be taken except fruit and water until the system is righted. Nothing 
will relieve the headache so surely, and leave the nervous system in 
as good condition, as hot baths^j prolonged until the pain is entirely 
overcome. 

HEART PALPITATION. 
Pregnancy frequently discovers to the woman and her friends 
a heart weakness not previously suspected ; it means that the patient 
has a masked rheumatic state of the system, which the nervous 
changes peculiar to pregnancy have brought into consciousness; for 
if pregnancy does one thing more than another, for the organism, 
it is to revolutionize and bring about a complete physiological re- 
adjustment, and in doing so it brings into consciousness and em- 
phasizes organic or functional defects. If the heart or kidneys 
are weak, they will show it because of the physiological exaltation 
brought on by pregnancy. 



* See formula for soup at end of this article. 
t See formula for bread at end of this article. 
t See list of vegetables at end of this article. 
§ See formula for salad at end of this article. 
?See information on bathing at end of this article. 



168 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

Any lack of physiological equilibrium of the various organs 
of the body will be shown during pregnancy, and unless proper 
attention be given, a weakened heart may give out, or slightly 
deranged kidneys may be the cause of uremic convulsions at con- 
finement. All the organs of the body do not suffer in this way; 
for some are improved: stomach trouble or deranged digestion is 
frequently made better, and lung diseases are brought to a standstill 
and often benefited — due, no doubt, to the improvement in nutri- 
tion. The heart and kidneys do not do so well; for their work 
is increased by arterial pressure — increased, too often, by over- 
eating. 

When the heart shows symptoms of giving down under the 
increase of work, there is but one rational treatment, and that is 
to secure physiological rest by sending the patient to bed and limit- 
ing the eating to barely enough to sustain life until, from rest, the 
heart has gained sufficient power to admit of more work (feeding). 
To give digitalis and strychnine is to invite disaster. I have known 
two women killed in this way the past year. Drugs do just the 
opposite of what should be done ; namely, they stimulate when rest 
is the only safe remedy. 

To feed "good nourishing food" is in the line of overwork 
and must prove disastrous. 

Perfect quiet and relief from annoyances, little or no food 
until much better, then increase the intake of food to agree with 
the power of resistance, is a proper and safe treatment. These 
cases should not fall under the care of the heavy-handed or inex- 
perienced physician. 



CONSTIPATION. 1 69 

KIDNEY DERANGEMENT. 

When the kidneys are failing to carry out the waste products, 
light eating of fruit and salad, warm bathing and rest will right 
them. Can drugs do anything? No more than for the heart. 
Stimulating drugs and foods will cause trouble. 

If those with weak kidneys are cared for properly from the 
beginning of pregnancy, there will be no danger of convulsions. 
When these patients do not do well, it is when they indulge in too 
much starchy foods and become too stout. Those with heart and 
kidney derangements should have special instructions. 

SWELLING OF THE FEET. 
Swelling of the feet is a symptom of weak heart or kidneys, 
or both, and it must be overcome by correcting the heart and kid- 
neys, as directed elsewhere. 

CONSTIPATION. 

Constipation is a symptom that should be corrected by food 
and water; there is no need for drugs. In first pregnancies this 
symptom is brought on by wrong eating. In mothers, or those 
who have given birth to one or more children, it may be caused 
by retroversion, and when it is, it will be hard to remedy until the 
womb has grown large enough to stay above the pelvis, or in the 
abdomen. 

During the first three months of pregnancy constipation may 
be benefited by teaching the patient to assume the knee-shoulder 
position, which she should take three or four times a day, allowing 
the womb to drop up, forward, and off the rectum. 

The frequent drinking of water and eating oi cooked fruits 
and vegetables will regulate the bowels. Patients should solicit 



170 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

a movement of the bowels at a regular time each day, and avoid 
raw vegetables and all dairy products except butter. 

Enemas are not to be recommended, but when the bowels 
fail to move for two days, a small enema may be used the evening 
of the second day. 

PAINFUL LABORS UNNECESSARY. 

There is no need of long, hard, painful labors; for the 
causes of them are easy to understand and are remedial. 

Prospective mothers should live as near normal as possible. 
Keep away from excitement, but do not go into seclusion. Read 
anything and everything, except fiction of a character to excite the 
emotions. 

Go to church, theaters, and all places of amusement, but do 
not go too often; practice moderation in all things. 

Speak in a low but distinct voice; avoid high-pitched tones 
and the people who talk in that manner. 

Avoid gossip and gossipers. Cultivate a love for truth and 
frankness, and practice poise. Do not act deceitfully, and avoid 
those who do. 

Make home what it should be by doing your whole duty, 
and if others are neglectful, do not disturb your own equilibrium 
by endeavoring to control the actions of others. 

Three rules are necessary for home government. They are: 
love, fidelity to duty, and self-control. 

A prospective mother should not brutalize her child by allow- 
ing herself to lose her temper, become envious or jealous; she 
should keep sweet, if possible. 

The right condition of mind is as necessary as the right condi- 
tion of the body. 



EVILS OF BEING ENCUMBERED. 171 

Physical and mental derangements I have pointed out, and 
they must be corrected as far as possible, and when they are the 
women evolve into a much better state of health. But what is 
often thought to be good health is in reality disease. When 
mothers grow fat and take on ten to fifty pounds more than they 
commonly weigh, they are not in an ideal state; they are in line 
for much suffering at childbirth, and its consequences, which have 
been pointed out time and again in this book. 

EVILS OF BEING ENCUMBERED. 

An encumbered mother usually gives birth to an encumbered 
child ; everything equal, a fat mother is more inclined to suffer than 
is a thin mother; besides, they are more inclined to take on in- 
flammations. 

Large and hard-headed children cause long and tedious la- 
bors. A child should not weigh to exceed six pounds, and to keep 
it from developing beyond that weight, the mother's weight 
should be maintained at very little above normal, if she has always 
been underweight. When one hundred and thirty pounds has 
been the highest weight of the mother between her eighteenth and 
twenty-fifth birthdays, she should hold her weight near this point 
and not go above one hundred and thirty-five pounds. 

BONY DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
It is a hard, unyielding, bony development of the child that 
causes the mother to suffer; soft, yielding heads will mold to ac- 
commodate themselves to the mother's pelvis; they can be com- 
pressed, elongated and bent to the needs of the pelvic straits with- 
out doing the child injury, and when the child is normal in size — 
six pounds or under — and the head soft, labor should not last long 
and the pain should be so slight that mother and child will be 



1 72 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

saved all shock and both get along well ; the mother will feel like 
getting up and going to work, and the child will sleep twenty-three 
and a half out of every twenty- four hours. The mother will not 
have milk fever, and she should give all the milk the child needs 
for food for the first year. All this advantage mothers can have 
if they carry out instructions. 

Prospective mothers should take a cold sponge-bath after ex- 
ercising in warm weather, and before exercising in cold weather. 
The bath should not require more than a minute or a minute and a 
half to take it, and it should be followed by a dry towel-rubbing 
of five to ten minutes' duration. Those who do not have a warm 
bathroom in the winter time may take the cold sponge-bath before 
retiring at night and follow with a short dry rubbing, and then 
take a dry rub the first thing on getting up of a morning. 

As much outdoor exercise should be taken as possible. It 
is a mistake for women to house up because they are pregnant; 
there is nothing to be ashamed of; indeed, it is something to cause 
a woman to be proud. Calisthenics is the proper indoor exercise, 
and walking or riding should be the outdoor exercise. 

The clothing should be suited to the weather; always light- 
weight cotton or linen underwear. When the surface of the body 
is cared for properly and given the cold bath, and plenty of dry 
rubbing, less clothing will be required to keep the body warm, 
and catching cold will be out of the question. 

EATING. 

The eating should be of food that will not cause stoutness 

and will not build a bony child. Some people may think that my 

recommendation of light eating, or restricting the eating to food 

that will not produce weight and bone, will prove detrimental to 



MEAT-EATING. 1 73 

the mother in preventing her from giving sufficient milk and causing 
her milk to be deficient in the elements of bone, nerve and muscle 
building; but this is not true; the children will be much smaller at 
their birth and for the first six months or year, but they will be more 
active, healthier, and mentally brighter; they will teeth earlier on 
an average, and the teeth will be smaller, more uniform and 
stronger, and will last longer, and these children will not be sub- 
ject to the diseases common to those of over-fed mothers. 

MEAT-EATING. 

In hot weather the pregnant mother should not eat meat 
oftener than once every other day, and nuts, eggs, fish, lamb and 
fowl should be the variety. I class nuts with meat. 

Nuts take the place of meat, if desired ; or nuts for one meal, 
eggs for another, and lamb or chicken for the third dinner each 
week. 

Pecans are the best nuts ; from thirty to forty half-meats at a 
meal. One egg is quite enough for the egg meal. 

Breakfasts should be of fruit — one kind at a meal, and 
change each day if desired. Fresh fruits should be eaten without 
sugar and cream; however, there is no objection to sugar and 
cream with berries ; the cream should be half milk. Cottage cheese, 
or cream cheese, or clabber milk, can be eaten with the fruit at the 
first meal; positively no bread nor anything made from grains is to 
be eaten with fruit. 

Lunch may be made of vegetable soup, toasted bread and 
butter ; or plain cake and ice cream, or a cup of custard ; or toasted 
bread, butter and ice cream or custard ; or a bread or rice pudding, 
and clabber milk; occasionally custard or mince pie and a glass 



1 74 EASY CHILDBIRTH. 

of milk. In winter-time sweet milk, in summer clabber or butter- 
milk. The milk is to be sipped slowly and eaten last. 

If preserved fruits, marmalades, jellies and fruit butters are 
desired for lunch, eat them with whipped cream, cottage cheese 
and buttermilk or clabber milk; positively no bread, cake or any- 
thing made from grain is to be eaten with this meal. 

I have people tell me they cannot eat preserved fruits and 
jellies without bread. I tell them they must eat these combinations 
on their own prescription, for I will not agree to it. 

DINNERS. 

Dinners every other day in warm weather should be nuts, 
eggs, fowl or fish with cooked non-starchy vegetables and a salad, 
followed with ice cream, cup custard, prune-whip, or fruit gelatine. 

When the bowels are constipated, one or two cups of tea- 
kettle tea may be drunk at the close of each meal. 

In the winter-time meat, eggs, nuts or fish can be eaten at 
each dinner with the cooked vegetables recommended for summer 
eating, and a salad made of lettuce, tomatoes, celery and onion, 
dressing the same as for summer salad. 

There are people who do not digest nuts well; they should 
eat meat, eggs or fish. 

Watch the weight, and if there is a tendency to go above the 
requirements, cut the four ounces of toasted bread, eaten at lunch, 
to two ounces, or drop the bread out entirely for a few days. 
Those who are over-weight should leave bread and cake out entirely 
until reduced to normal; then eat sparingly. 

There will be wiseacres who will tell those attempting to 
carry out these instructions that I do not allow enough proteid 
foods to keep up the body; please refer them to the cow out in 



ELEMENTS FOR BODY-BUILDING. 1 75 

the pasture who eats grass and not only builds proteid, blood and 
tissue for her own body, but gives milk that builds proteid for her 
calf and human animals as well. 

All the body needs is to be supplied with the elements and 
it does the rest. Vegetables, fruit, nuts, eggs and meat, with the 
small amount of bread I recommend, furnish all the food mothers 
need. 

Follow my instructions, and prove by following them to the 
letter that I do, or do not, know what I am talking about. This is 
the quickest way to down me and shut me out effectually. 



Formulary 



Formulary 



HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE BODY. 

Everything that she can do should be done by the prospec- 
tive mother to establish full health. The clothing should be light, 
loose and comfortable. It is a mistake to dress too warm; light- 
weight cotton or linen underwear should be worn the year round; 
when the weather is cold, outside clothing should be in keeping 
with the weather; don't dress too warm in the house; when out of 
doors, wraps should be heavy enough to keep the body comfort- 
able. 

A correctly cared- for skin protects itself; only those who ne- 
glect the skin and dress too warm suffer from the cold. The cold 
bath and dry rubbing of the entire body builds a fine skin resist- 
ance. In reality, the skin is the correct protector from cold, when 
treated properly. A cold bath should be taken every day; it 
should be taken as follows: 

Draw four or five inches of cold water into the bath-tub, and 
begin by washing the face and hands while standing on the outside 
of the tub. Carry the water up over one arm, and rub with the 
open hand, repeating until the arm is used to the cold. Then treat 
the other arm the same way. Then step into the tub and treat 
each leg the same way. Then squat in the water and give the 
genitals a thorough bath. Then drop on the knees and carry the 
water over the body; step out of the tub, and follow with a thor- 
ough dry rubbing with a towel. At night, before going to bed, 
give the body a five-minute dry towel-rubbing. Sleep in a night- 



1 80 FORMULARY. 

gown or pajamas, and as near out of doors as possible. When 
the cold bath is followed by cold feet and hands, it should be 
preceded by a quick hot bath for the hands, face and feet. Draw 
a little hot water and wash the face, neck and hands; then step 
into the tub and allow the feet to toast for a few minutes; then 
take the cold bath as directed above. In the winter time the bath 
should be followed by ten minutes of calisthenic exercise, and in 
the summer the exercise should precede the bath. Much walking 
in the open air should be indulged in every day. The bedroom 
must be thoroughly ventilated night and day. Closets should be 
free of soiled clothing, and ventilated enough to keep the air in 
them fresh and free from odor. 

Sleep. — Sleep is an important item in the care of the body. 
A pregnant woman should go to bed not later than ten o'clock in 
the summer time and as early as nine o'clock in the winter time. 
A twenty- to thirty-minute sleep after lunch each day should be 
taken; this does not mean two or three hours. Lounging begets 
stupidity; the woman who wants a bright, active child must be 
wide-awake, active and mentally alert. Several hours each day 
should be spent in mental development. If the mother is indifferent 
to books, she may expect a child that will be slow to learn. What- 
ever the mother would have the child be, she must give it the im- 
pulse by thinking and acting on lines leading to such a development. 
If a child is stupid and dull, it will be because the mother acted in 
a stupid manner. If a child is all appetite — a sensualist — it will 
be because the mother catered to her sensual nature. 

The mother must be industrious if she would have her child 
the same. 

To wish and wish and never act will not impart action to the 
child. The child is impressed with acts, not good wishes. 



correct food combinations. 181 

The Weight of the Mother Must Be Kept Down. 
— Eating must be of a character that will not produce weight. 
The pregnant woman must not allow herself to grow fat. Enough 
food can be eaten to keep up the strength and not produce weight. 

Fruit, cottage cheese and clabber-milk or buttermilk for 
breakfast; when there is a tendency to increase in weight, leave off 
the milk and cheese, and follow the fruit with a cup or two of 
teakettle tea. In the winter time, if there is a craving for jellies, 
preserves, marmalade and fruit butters, they may be eaten with 
milk half cream and the other dairy products. The sweet dried 
fruits, such as raisins, dates and figs, may be eaten with the dairy 
products, but under no circumstances should bread be used with 
the fruit breakfasts. 

Keep the bowels regular by fruit and water-drinking and 
having a regular time each day to solicit a movement. Go whether 
there is a desire or not. 

LUNCHEON. — The midday meal may be toast bread, made 
according to the formula given at the end of this book; never more 
than four ounces of toast bread at this meal. A dish of vegetable 
soup may be eaten before or after the bread and butter. Do not 
take any fluid while bread or toast is in the mouth. Instead of 
bread, a plain cake and ice-cream or cup custard may be eaten two 
or three times a week. Rice or tapioca pudding, with a glass of 
buttermilk, can be eaten occasionally for lunch. Teakettle tea 
may follow each meal, if desired. 

DINNER. — Meat, fish, eggs or nuts may be eaten every day 
in the winter, and every other day in the summer. Two cooked 
unstarchy vegetables and a raw vegetable salad may be had at 
every dinner. 



1 82 FORMULARY. 

Dinners may be started with a vegetable soup, such as recom- 
mended for lunch. Desserts should not be eaten. Such foods are 
to be eaten for lunch. 

During the corn season this vegetable may be used at every 
dinner, if enjoyed that often; or a full meal of corn may be eaten 
without other food; or one or two of the succulent vegetables may 
be added, if desired — such as summer squash. 

PLAN CRITICISED. — There will be neighbors and friends of 
those who undertake to follow out my instructions who will tell 
them that the plan is all wrong and, if followed out, will lead to 
evil consequences; and they may reinforce what they say by de- 
claring that their physicians have told them so. To avoid such 
disquieting suggestions, it is necessary not to discuss the subject 
with anyone. If people generally know what they should do on 
this subject, I should not have felt the need of bringing this book 
out. 

That it is needed, anyone with intelligence must admit if he 
will look about him and see the unnecessary sufferings of mothers 
and children. 

How to Make Bread and Toast. — To a quart of 
white flour add sufficient salt, a heaping teaspoonful of baking- 
powder, and two tablespoonfuls of melted butter; make into a 
dough with milk (unskimmed). Bake in the form of a loaf or 
biscuit. When baked, wrap in a damp cloth and put away until 
cool; then slice, and return to oven and toast. Or you can have 
this bread made in the form of biscuits. When they come from 
the oven, they should not be more than an inch thick, baked to a 
good crisp crust, bottom and top. Left-over biscuits can be split 
and toasted for future eating. 



FOUR RULES. 183 

The dough is to be mixed and in the oven as quickly as pos- 
sible. The less it is stirred or manipulated the better. Whole 
wheat and white flour, equal parts, make a good bread. 

How to Make Vegetable Soup. — Take equal parts of 
four or five of the following vegetables: potatoes, turnips, carrots, 
gumbo, cabbage, celery, spinach, onions, green peas, beans or 
corn; run these vegetables through a vegetable mill; put to cook 
with enough water to prevent burning, and, when tender, reduce to 
the consistency of soup by adding boiling water. Season with salt 
and butter. Those in full health can use hot milk to reduce in 
place of water. 

This soup should be eaten at lunch and dinner. If made out 
of prime vegetables, it should be enjoyed by anyone with enough 
appetite to justify him in eating anything. 

The Non-Starchy Vegetables. — Turnips, carrots, 
cauliflower, beets, cabbage, onions, summer squash, parsnips, 
spinach, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, green peas, string beans, 
celery, asparagus, corn on the cob, kale, salsify, endive, egg plant, 
dandelion, and all kinds of greens. 

My use of the word "non-starchy" is purely arbitrary on my 
part; for, in fact, there is starch in all vegetables. 

Decidedly Starchy Foods. — I class as decidedly starchy 
foods everything made from grains: wheat, rye, corn, barley, rice, 
tapioca; also the Irish and sweet potatoes, dry beans and peas. 

Four Rules. — The following four rules are necessary if 
mothers desire fine health, and to give birth to healthy children : 

First Rule: Never eat rvhen you are feeling badly. 

You may not understand what I mean by "feeling badly." 
If you get up in the morning and you have not rested well, and 
feel heavy, tired, dull, cranky, nervous, go through with your pre- 



1 84 FORMULARY. 

scribed morning routine, but DO NOT EAT BREAKFAST. Sip a 
little water every hour or two during the forenoon. 

If you pass through the entire forenoon feeling all right, you 
can have your lunch. You must feel well from one mealtime to 
the other, or miss your meal, even if it makes you weak to go 
without food. The more of this discomfort you have, the more 
evidence you have that you need to fast. 

When you cannot miss a meal without feeling inconvenienced, 
you have chronic irritation of the stomach, and the oftener you go 
without food under such circumstances, the sooner you will be well. 

Second Rule: Never eat when you do not have a £een 
relish for food. 

When mealtime comes, if it is a matter of indifference 
whether you eat or not, do not eat. 

Third Rule: Always avoid overeating. 

Fourth Rule: Thoroughly masticate and insalivate your 
food. 

Soft foods are to be mixed with saliva before they are swal- 
lowed. If you will masticate your food thoroughly, you are not 
very liable to overeat. 

Hints Worth Remembering. — Always eat your bread 
and butter BY ITSELF, masticating and insalivating each morsel 
until it is liquified in the mouth. 

For CONSTIPATION. — Between getting-up time in the morn- 
ing and breakfast drink a pint of warm water; then drink a glass 
before each of your meals. This will tend to keep your bowels 
regular. When going without food, take a glass every hour or 
two. 



CONSTIPATING FOODS. 185 

If the bowels are somewhat constipated, remember that 
spinach and onions are more laxative than other vegetables. 

When to Drink Cold Water. — Do not drink cold 
water for three and one-half to four hours after your meals. If 
you must drink during this time, take a glass of hot water. Cold 
water checks digestion. 

Foods That Are Constipating. — Keep in mind the 
fact that all the dairy products except butter, and all raw vege- 
tables, are constipating; hence, when there is a sluggish condition 
of the bowels, stop the use of these foods until your bowels are 
regular. Eat freely of the cooked non-starchy vegetables. Spinach 
and onions are more laxative than others. 

Remember that nuts, fish and eggs are always classed as 
meat. When I speak of "meat" I include these foods. You 
should not have two meats at a meal. If you have fish, eat about 
all the fish you want; the same with meat; but don't break the 
third rule. I would not advise, however, to eat more than one egg 
at a meal. 



Index 



INDEX 



Page 

Abdominal rigidity 38 

Abortion 47, 82 

Abscesses : 55, 58, 62 

In tubes or ovaries 14 

Acidity of stomach, cause of 157 

Acne 117 

Adam, operation on 13 

Adhesions 56 

Alcohol 33 

Alkaloids 4 

Ambition and necessity mold circumstances 17 

Amenorrhea 82 

Artificial menopause 97 

Atresia 93 

Autotoxemia 34, 69, 118 

Autotoxemic children 37 

Average citizens are average criminals 16 

Average physicians awed 19 

Bad habits 34, 110 

Bad mental habits 23 

Baths, cold sponge 39, 172, 179 

Hot 39 

Battey fad 8 

Births, falling off of 8 

Brutal husbands , 132 

Burning in urination 92 

Callosity of conscience 15 

Cancer, history of 100 

Of the breast 125 

Of the womb 72, 99 

Cancer cures are largely failures 113 

Cancerous cachexia 108 

Care of the body 179 

Catarrhal inflammation 31, 37 

(189) 



Page 

Catching-- cold habit 37 

Cause of death from diseases 104 

Cellulitis 55 

Change of life 86 

Cholera infantum 161 

Civilization, effect of, on labor 45 

Cleanliness great immunizing agent 95 

Close housing 21 

Clothing 179 

Code of ethics 15 

Coffee and tea hasten old age 34 

Concentration, lack of 146 

Conservation of energy 163 

Constipating foods 185 

Constipation 169, 184 

Contentment is a habit 24-25 

Criminals, not born criminals 16 

Cultivate patience 63 

Poise 22 

Cure means education 149 

Curetting not curative 50 

Cystocele 89 

Daily habits build disease 17 

Decomposition of indurated tissue 104 

Degeneration of tissues 103 

Delayed mammary development 150 

Deranged secretions 151 

Discontent, a habit. 24 

Ruins health 23 

Diseases, are walled off 4 

Common to pregnant women 165 

End when not encouraged 6 

Have simple origin 18 

Influences favorable 20 

Self-limited 20 

Distention of the womb 158 

Divorce mill would run full-blast 22 

Doctors are a superior class 17 

Domestic unhappiness 26 

Douche, hot-water 165 

Drainage of abscesses 61 

(190) 



Page 

Easy childbirth 155 

Easy labor, necessity for teaching- 43 

Eating during pregnancy 172, 181 

Eating for two a fallacy 156 

Education of nervous children 146 

Emotional overstimulation 31 

Encumbered mother and children 171 

Encumbered mothers are autotoxemic 159 

Endocervicitis 41 

Endometritis 41 

Enervation 33, 88, 104, 138, 144, 156, 160 

From stimulation 33 

From worry 22 

Should be cured first 35 

Envy and jealousy build disease 26 

Errors of diagnosis 117 

Every case a law unto itself 149 

Excess weight 159 

Excessive menstruation a safety valve 120 

Eye-strain 147 

Faith cure 110 

Fallopian abscess 59 

A case of 59-61 

Danger in 61 

Fanaticism 75 

Fasting 49, 63 

In uterine prolapsus 91 

Fear 11, 65, 95 

Fibroid tumors 9, 11, 16, 47, 66 

Etiology of 67 

Varieties of 66 

Flexions, uterine 38 

Food must fit the needs 74 

Fool, what is the matter with 23 

Formulary 179 

Four rules 183 

Gas distention of bowels 36, 38 

Gas-poisoning 101 

Getting on in the world . 24 

Germs 104, 105 

Gluttony, effect of 158 

Gonorrhea 94 

(191) 



Page 

Granular inflammation 43 

Gynecologists, bigoted 5 

Intolerance of 5 

Happiness , 25 

Headache 167 

Health, the best immunizer 20 

Heart palpitation 167 

Heels vs. brains 29 

Hemorrhage 70-71 

A conservative measure 71 

Homes ruined 21 

How to keep from having children 46 

Humane to offer operation 12 

Hyperesthesia of vulva 131 

Hysteria 141 

Idiocy, no development 142 

Improper eating 79 

Incontinence of urine 88 

Indigestion 38 

Infection, following childbirth 51 

The same 105 

Injuries at childbirth 89 

Insanity 123, 142 

Intra-uterine douches 52 

Introspection 143 

Irritations 119 

Nervous 140 

Ovarian and uterine 121 

Jealousy 26, 40, 130, 162 

Kidney derangement 169 

Knee-shoulder position 48, 169 

Language, too vigorous 15 

Learn limitations and respect them > — 149 

Leucorrhea 31, 36, 42 

Leucorrhea, dysmenorrhea, flexions 33 

Leukomaines 4 

Localization of disease 16 

Lost resistance 34 

Lumps in the breast 127 

Lymphangitis 55 

(192) 



Page 

Marriages, thoughtless 80 

Matrimonial slavery 161 

Meat-eating 173 

Menopause, artificial 97 

Menorrhagia 67, 83 

Menstrual disorders 76 

Menstruation, abnormal , 81 

Metrorrhagia 85 

Milk-leg 42, 55 

Miscarriage due to abuse 162 

Modern medical science 7 

Moral idiots 141 

Natures undermined 164 

Morality 69 

Morning sickness 165 

Most important treatment 6 

Mottoes 4 

Mutilating women 6 

Nature, can aid herself 14 

Resents heroic treatment 54 

Nervous irritation 140 

Nervousness . . . .• 140, 156, 166 

Neurasthenia 145 

Nymphomania 119 

Obesity, as cause of sterility 96 

Occlusion of vagina 93 

Onanism 69, 119 

Open sesame 10 

Operations, a dernier resort 12 

Do not cure cancer 102 

Many made worse by 14 

Some die in spite of 14 

Unnecessary 10, 12 

Organic functioning 103 

Ovarian diseases 116 

Overeating 21, 76, 160 

As cause of varicose veins 138 

Hastens maturity 79 

Overstimulation 156 

Overwork during gestation 160 

Painful labor unnecessary 170 

Menstruation 37 

(193) 



Page 

Paralysis of will 133 

Pelvic abscess 42, 58 

Rigidity 38 

People deceive themselves 24 

Peritonitis 51 

Phlebitis 55 

Physicians, who are wide-awake 6 

Who believe in surgery 14 

Pin-mouth' womb 117 

Polypi, uterine 64 

Precocity 80 

Premature decay 45 

Development 150 

Prevention, of disease 155 

The cure for cancer 113, 115, 126 

Professional fallacies 164 

Prolapsus of womb 90 

Pruritus of vulva 128 

Pus absorption 42 

Quack cures 110 

Quacks, ethical 9 

Quarreling ruins health 27 

Radical operations ! 119 

Real cures few 14 

Rectocele 89 

Reflex influences 6 

Reign of terror 7 

Relief of pruritus 128 

Remove the cause 74, 78, 87, 150 

Retracted nipples 150 

Salpingitis 55 

Selfishness 27 

Sepsis and germs 108 

Septic infection 42, 51, 108 

Sex impulses 121 

Neurotics 85 

Shock 104 

Slavery, matrimonial 161 

Slaves and their masters 18 

Sleep 180 

(194) 



Page 

Snapshot cures 114 

Social activity causes ill-health 28 

Specific infection 51-53 

Sterility 95 

Prevents crime 17 

Stone in the bladder 92 

Suffering unnecessary 155 

Surgery for relief of fibroid tumors 72 

Swelling of the feet 169 

Symptoms, of cancer of the womb 100 

Of fibroid tumor 70 

Of indigestion 77 

Of overeating 157 

Of pelvic abscess 62 

Of vaginitis 134 

Syphilis 94 

Tears of neck of womb 42 

Thickening of mucous mebrane 38 

Tilden bread 182 

Toast 182 

Tobacco 33 

Toxicity, accidental 4 

Cause of 4, 106 

Treatment, after childbirth or abortion 52 

Of abnormal menstruation 81 

Of amenorrhea 82 

Of burning in urinating 93 

Of cancer of breast 126 

Of cancer of womb 107, 113 

Of endometritis and endocervicitis 47 

Of fibroid tumor 70 

Of flexions 39 

Of gonorrhea 94 

Of hyperesthesia of vulva 132 

Of menorrhagia 85 

Of metrorrhagia 86 

Of neurasthenia 148 

Of pelvic abscess 62 

Of phlebitis 55 

Of pruritus of vulva 129 

Of salpingitis 55 

Of specific infection 54 

Of sterility 96 

(195) 



Treatment — continued: Page 

Of vaginitis 135 

Of varicose veins 139 

Unnecessary operations 125 

Unselfish doctors 143 

Urinary derangements 88 

Usual good health 113 

Uterine flexions 38 

Polypi . . 64 

Prolapsus 90 

Vaginal douches 129 

Vaginitis 134 

Varicose veins 137 

Vegetables, varieties of 183 

Vegetable soup 183 

Versions 41 

Waste of life 47, 86 

Why girls marry badly 24 

Why mothers lose their milk 156 

Why women do not get up strong 42 

Why women suffer 45 

Woman's prime 137 

Women willing to be unsexed 8 

Worry 11, 22, 64 

Wrecks and wrecking 77 



(196) 















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